Project 21: New Visions

Everyone played " hide and seek" as a child. For black voters, however, the game continues every election. This year was no exception. Democratic leaders and their black allies "hide" equal justice and civil rights issues in campaigns for black voters to seek, and they use them to win their support. This year, these issues included police brutality, racial profiling, hate crime legislation and Confederate heritage displays. I question why these concerns only arose close to election time. The NAACP continues its boycott of South Carolina over the Confederate Battle Flag. The group succeeded in moving the flag from atop ...
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Fear that the world is warming because of industrialization is a theory with no factual basis. What we really need to fear are the policies being pushed to stop it. These new regulations will hurt everyone, especially those struggling to get by. As a black American caught in that struggle, I particularly fear for my community and myself. While global warming proponents claim emissions from our cars and factories are causing the planet to heat, the facts don't prove it. Despite some hot summers and a strong El Nino, NASA satellite measurements - the most accurate indicator of global temperature ...
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A New Visions Commentary paper published October 2000 by The National Center for Public Policy Research, 501 Capitol Ct., N.E., Washington, DC 20002, 202/543-4110, Fax 202-543-5975, E-Mail [email protected], Web http://www.nationalcenter.org. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. I'm a conservative. I'm also black. My political affiliation sometimes raises eyebrows among my liberal friends. They question my support for conservative values with shocked disbelief. They want to remind me of my race - as if it matters - saying, "But you're black." Another familiar retort is "there is no such thing as a black conservative - it's an oxymoron." Oh, I think ...
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The more we get the more we lose. That statement alone should be enough to rally blacks into a concerted effort to demand our equal rights. Our leaders are always on the stump, preaching about how our rights are being violated and that we are being taken advantage of in every respect. How, then, can they allow the small victories we've already won to be taken and expanded upon by every other group in this country? Where are our leaders? For example, we asked for and obtained the name African-American, although the name means something different to just about every ...
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Jesse Jackson says public schools are good enough for all children. On a recent airing of ABC's "This Week," he compared America's public schools to Washington, DC tap water, reckoning that if the quality of the city's water (and, by association, the schools) is good enough for some, it is good enough for all. To further his case against school vouchers, Jackson made clever statements like, "Let's do heavy lifting and lift all of our children." Panelist George Will countered that 30 Michigan school districts fail to graduate two-thirds of their students and are considering a voucher initiative that does ...
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A teacher at Bryant Elementary School in Cobb County, Georgia, may lose her job after she allegedly chastised two 4th grade girls for using the "N-word." As the father of a second-grader at Bryant, I'm very concerned about the way this incident, which should have been handled quickly and discreetly through the school system, has turned into a community-wide civil rights issue of ridiculous proportions. On August 30, Cheryl Mewborn, a white teacher at the predominantly black Bryant, broke up two girls in her class who reportedly called each other the N-word. She told them that kind of language should ...
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A New Visions Commentary paper published September 2000 by The National Center for Public Policy Research, 501 Capitol Ct., N.E., Washington, DC 20002, 202/543-4110, Fax 202-543-5975, E-Mail [email protected], Web http://www.nationalcenter.org. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. Personal injury lawyers have long touted their work as noble and altruistic - saving poor consumers, union workers and minorities from the unbridled greed of Corporate America. The reality, unfortunately, is far different. Such lawyers heavily recruit class-action plaintiffs in minority areas with promises of a big-bucks payoff. When the awards come in, however, the lawyers walk away with millions of dollars, while minority ...
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When Select Steel Inc. proposed construction of a $175 million steel mill that would create 200 jobs in the economically-distressed community of Genesee County, Michigan, the majority of local residents welcomed the proposal. But thanks to the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) so-called environmental justice policy, which purports to protect minorities from being disproportionately affected by pollution, the company was forced to locate to a more affluent area last year - depriving economically-disadvantaged minorities of the opportunity to get high-paying manufacturing jobs. When Select Steel announced its plan to establish a plant in Genesee County in 1998, an area whose residents ...
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A slavemaster must rob a new slave of his or her identity. Once this is accomplished, further brainwashing and dehumanizing of the slave is possible. Our Negro African ancestors were robbed of their identities in this manner. Today, in the name of Marxist-driven "political correctness," all Americans are being robbed of their true identities. What's really bad about this is the fact that, unlike with the new African slaves arriving here hundreds of years ago, the robbery taking place right now did not require any force. If you were born in Arkansas as I was, you are a native Arkansan ...
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Who could forget the sound and the fury of the recent Million Mom March (it was thousands, actually) in Washington, D.C.? Ahh, the pageantry. Ooh, the morality. Ouch - the hypocrisy! Say what? Rosie O'Donnell, the television-talk-show-host-turned-anti-gun-advocate - the woman who is actively leading a crusade to disarm law-abiding citizens - got caught not paying attention to her own press releases. It seems that Ms. O'Donnell, in the quest for security for her own family, quietly pushed for an armed security guard to protect her son when he attends school this fall. This news was originally reported by Ms. O'Donnell's ...
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A New Visions Commentary paper published August 2000 by The National Center for Public Policy Research, 501 Capitol Ct., N.E., Washington, DC 20002, 202/543-4110, Fax 202-543-5975, E-Mail [email protected], Web http://www.nationalcenter.org. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. Carnivore is hungry, and it's looking for food. What is Carnivore? It is a device that the FBI uses to snoop on your e-mail and behavior on the Internet. It is the biggest threat to your privacy that has come down the pike in a long time. Carnivore is a software/hardware combination, meaning it's both programming and machine. When installed on an Internet Service ...
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On June 16, Jerry Johnson was confronted by every good parent's nightmare. Hanging from a pecan tree in his front yard was the body of his youngest child, his boy, Raynard. Seventeen-year-old Raynard was handsome, got good grades and was well-liked. Still, even teens who seem happy are known to commit suicide. This might have been a private tragedy except for one thing - the Johnson's live in Kokomo, Mississippi. Mississippi has always had a horrid fascination for me. When I was a child, my parents usually spoke of it in serious tones. They came to Washington, D.C. in the ...
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Do you ever feel like you're being taxed to death? The estates of many Americans are taxed when they die - sometimes creating terrible problems for those still living. And these unfair taxes may be the death of new African-American prosperity. As more Americans reach higher income brackets and open their own businesses, death taxes are an increasing problem. According to figures in Project 21's soon-to-be-published Black America 2000 report, the income levels of black households have tripled in the past 24 years. Black-owned businesses more than doubled in number between 1987 and 1997. This black prosperity and perseverance, however, ...
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A New Visions Commentary paper published July 2000 by The National Center for Public Policy Research, 501 Capitol Ct., N.E., Washington, DC 20002, 202/543-4110, Fax 202-543-5975, E-Mail [email protected], Web http://www.nationalcenter.org. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. The call came the morning of Easter Sunday as I was working on my "award winning" cheese grits. "Mike." It was my father. He is usually understated. If the world was coming to an end, his tone would be about the same as asking me to pass the butter knife, but this time his voice gave me reason to pause. "How soon can you ...
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A New Visions Commentary paper published July 2000 by The National Center for Public Policy Research, 501 Capitol Ct., N.E., Washington, DC 20002, 202/543-4110, Fax 202-543-5975, E-Mail [email protected], Web http://www.nationalcenter.org. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. Earlier this year, a six-year-old boy pulled out a gun at school and killed one of his classmates at a school in Mount Morris Township, Michigan. Her name was Kayla Rolland. She was a cute, rosy-cheeked blond girl with intelligent eyes. She came from an apparently normal, loving family. Her killer did not. No, little Dedrick Owens's family could be called a lot of ...
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With gasoline prices rising to well over two dollars a gallon in the Midwestern United States, America's love affair with the automobile may be headed toward a break-up. But before we ditch our wheels, we should first demand the government get rid of policies helping to drive up fuel prices. Our biggest roadblock to reforming gas prices is Bill Clinton. Although he says he understands the needs of poor and minority citizens, his energy and regulatory policies hurt us more than any other segment of the population. And he has fought hard to protect these hurtful programs from attempts to ...
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Wouldn't you rather eat a banana than get a shot? I know that I would. Science now makes it possible to get a vaccination against hepatitis, which kills an estimated 100 million people per year worldwide, simply by eating a banana. A breakthrough in the field of biotechnology, it virtually eliminates the storage and sterilization concerns previously necessary for injections. It also saves money, costing just two cents for a banana instead of $125 for a shot! But this and other marvels of genetic-modification are at risk. Environmentalists are attacking biotechnology, trying to convince the government and the public that ...
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A New Visions Commentary paper published June 2000 by The National Center for Public Policy Research, 501 Capitol Ct., N.E., Washington, DC 20002, 202/543-4110, Fax 202-543-5975, E-Mail [email protected], Web http://www.nationalcenter.org. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. "Be it required that there be a finding that a proposed federal environmental policy, program or regulation not have a disparate economic impact on minority populations and low-income populations before implementation." So should read one of the first Executive Orders the next president should issue upon taking office in 2001. This Executive Order is needed since African-Americans bear a disproportionate share of supporting the ...
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In one corner, the long dead are reburied with full honors. In another corner, a young boy with no hands walks down a dusty road towards government-held positions - fleeing rebels closing in on the capital. Yet another corner has government troops launching SCUD-B missiles at rebel-held positions. In the last corner, two MIG fighters scream towards a school and drop their bombs, killing some 30 children inside. Is this Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya or East Timor? No, this is just another day in Africa. The honored dead are Rwandan, the boy is in Sierra Leone, the SCUDs are being ...
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We were shocked when a black immigrant in New York City was shot at by police over 40 times while simply reaching for his wallet. We were appalled by the merciless and brutal beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles. We were horrified when two teens gunned down classmates and a teacher at Columbine High School in Colorado. Why? Ultimately, it was because the media led us to our anger. They told us to be outraged. The media regarded these events as "fret-worthy." And we responded. The media tells us what should shock, appall and horrify us. The way they ...
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