Springfield, MA elects first African American school superintendent

Source
http://www. wwlp. com/Global/story. asp?S=8278992

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WWLP) When Dr. Alan Ingram steps into the Springfield Superintendent's office in September, he'll become the city's first African American to hold the position.



History was made on Tuesday when, in a unanimous vote, Springfield's Finance Control Board and School Committee chose Dr. Alan Ingram of Oklahoma to be the next school superintendent.



Some local parents say their child education leader's race makes no difference.



"It shouldn't matter who, as long as the person knows what he's doing, or knows what she's doing. It should really matter what, as long as they're here for the people then that's all that matters," said Saraya Wise of Springfield.



Henry Thomas of the Springfield Urban League calls Dr. Ingram's new job a milestone and even thinks it might be what Springfield's minority majority student body needs to get on the right track. "It's not that only an African American or Latino could do this job, it's if you have a qualified African American or Latino available to do the job and they are the best qualified for the job, then it's a bonus.

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Chris Gardener: Positive role model for all Black males

Watch the movie if you haven't seen it as yet.



The astounding yet true rags-to-riches saga of a homeless father who raised and cared for his son on the mean streets of San Francisco and went on to become a crown prince of Wall Street.

Howard Dean to Fox News: Coverage is "shockingly biased"

DEAN: We stayed off Fox for a long time because your news department is, in fact, biased. But, Chris, you haven't been. You've always been tough, but I always thought fair and I still think that's true. And we need to communicate with people who are going to vote in the Democratic Party. Hundreds of thousands of Republicans have turned their back on their own party to vote in the Democratic primaries in the last six months. We owe it to our -- to all the American people to reach out to those folks. This is not about Fox News. That's not why I'm here today. I'm out because I want to talk to your viewers directly about why this election is important and what we can offer the American people.

"When you start bringing up things that have nothing to do with the candidate and nothing to do with the issues, that's race baiting," Dean said on Fox News Sunday in response to a question whether the Wright issue and his ties to Obama hurt Democrats down ticket.

"There's a lot of difference between the Republicans and the Democrats on issues, but the biggest issue of all is we don't use this kind of stuff. We never have used this kind of stuff, and we're not going to start now," said the DNC chairman. "America is more important than the Republican Party, and that's the lesson that the voters are about to teach the Republicans."

WALLACE: The left wing of your party is in a snit over all these Democrats appearing on Fox. In fact, the head of MoveOn.org had this to say about Democrats on Fox. "It legitimizes a right wing network that is going to use that credibility to smear them in the general election." He and the head of the Daily Kos are using words about you guys showing up here as weak, idiotic, stupid. How do you respond to the left wing?

DEAN: What I'd say is this: we stayed off Fox for a long time because your news department is, in fact, biased. But, Chris, you haven't been. You've always been tough, but I always thought fair and I still think that's true. And we need to communicate with people who are going to vote in the Democratic Party. Hundreds of thousands of Republicans have turned their back on their own party to vote in the Democratic primaries in the last six months. We owe it to our -- to all the American people to reach out to those folks. This is not about Fox News. That's not why I'm here today. I'm out because I want to talk to your viewers directly about why this election is important and what we can offer the American people.

WALLACE: Let me ask you, and obviously it's always about the millions of people who watch these shows. Looking back, do you think it was a mistake for the Democratic Party to boycott Fox debates and all the other programs during the last year and thereby boycott getting your message out to the millions of people who watch?

DEAN: No, I think it was the right thing to do, because there are some things in the news department that have really been shockingly biased and I think that's wrong and I just say so right up front. It is important also for us -- we shouldn't punish the viewers of Fox by staying away. Now those viewers have had an opportunity to look at the debates on other channels, now they're going to have an opportunity viewing on this channel and I think that's fair.

Will Senator John Edwards endorse Hillary Clinton before Tuesday?

I think that given his statements about Hillary Clinton during the debates prior to dropping out, it would be inconceivable for him to every endorsement given his stark rebuke of her. I frankly believe that it would be devastating for his political career to make such a statement about Hillary Clinton and then turn around and endorse her. Quite frankly it would be an endorsement of everything that he spoke out against

MR. EDWARDS: Thank you very much.

I mean, another perspective on why the Republicans keep talking about Senator Clinton is, Senator, she --
they may actually want to run against you, and that's the reason they keep bringing you up.

What I would say is Senator Clinton just said that she believes we desperately need change in this country, and I -- I agree with that. I actually think we have a system that's broken. It's rigged, it's corrupt, and it does not work for the American people, and it's time we start telling the truth about that. Too much influence from entrenched interests -- insurance companies, drug companies, oil companies. Too much influence from Washington lobbyists.

And so the question I think that voters have to ask themselves is, do you believe that the candidate who's raised the most money from Washington lobbyists, Democrat or Republican; the candidate who's raised the most money from the health industry -- drug companies, health insurance companies; the candidate who's raised the most money from the defense industry, Republican or Democrat; who -- and the answer to all those questions is that's Senator Clinton -- will she be the person who brings about the change in this country? You know, I -- I believe in Santa Claus, I believe in the Tooth Fairy, but I don't think that's going to happen. I really don't.

And I -- I think that if people want the status quo, Senator Clinton's your candidate. That's what I believe. If they want real change, then they need somebody who tells the truth about a system that doesn't work, who believes that this may actually be the first generation -- we're all worried about this being the first generation that doesn't leave the world and America better for our children, unlike 20 generations that came before us.

This is not an abstract thing. This is not about lobbyists. Matter of fact, it's not about any of us. The truth is, when this election is over, I'm going to be fine. Senator Clinton's going to be fine. Senator Obama's going to be fine. The question is, will America be fine? And will we ensure -- and I think this is the great moral test of our generation -- will we ensure that our children have a better life than we've had? That's the responsibility we have.

N.C. NAACP files formal vote-suppression complaint against Women's Voices, alerts U.S. DOJ of concerns

According to the Institute for Southern Studies:

The North Carolina NAACP has filed a formal complaint of possible voter suppression against Women's Voices Women Vote, the D.C. nonprofit that as we revealed earlier this week was behind the deceptive and illegal robo-calls made to state residents. The N.C. NAACP hand-delivered its complaint today to state Attorney General Roy Cooper and State Board of Elections Executive Director Gary Bartlett. It's also alerted the U.S. Department of Justice that it's collecting more information from its national network and is contemplating filing a formal complaint with that agency.

N.C. NAACP President Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II (center in photo) announced the filing of the complaint at a press conference held this afternoon outside the N.C. Department of Justice. He was joined by his group's attorney, Al McSurely (left), and Bob Hall (right) of Democracy North Carolina. The state Attorney General's office is already investigating Women's Voices, but the N.C. NAACP and Democracy North Carolina want to be parties to that investigation.

"When you mess with the right to vote, you're messing with everything that is fundamental in our democracy," Barber said.
Source
http://southernstudies.org/facingsouth/2008/05/nc-naacp-files-formal-vote-suppression.asp

These tactics were used before, especially when George Bush was running for President, however, for the most part, the source of these misleading tactics were never discovered. Listen to the misleading information:



Read more here from the Institute for Southern Studies

Who else will get hurt by continuing the Rev. Wright controversy?

While the folks at the Hillary Clinton campaign are thinking to themselves that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy will help them to secure the nomination by helping their notion that this makes him less electable, I think that current trends will prove that this strategy will ultimately backfire and hurt Hillary Clinton if for some crazy reason she gets the nomination, and ultimately the Democratic Party, notably all the elected officials that have endorsed Barack Obama and new Democratic candidates that have been endorsed by Barack Obama.

Recently, Senator John Kerry stated the media needs to "let go," and summarily stated that Barack Obama has done enough to distance himself from the statements of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Listen to what he had to say:

I think that the Democratic leadership is failing the party in a whole by allowing the media to continue to link the words of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright unfairly to Sen. Barack Obama for the sole reason that they are fearful of a Black presidency. I think that it might be a little too late for the Democratic leadership to speak out and turn the tide of what could damage the entire party. Perception is everything, and if Democratic voters are being conditioned to accept that something is wrong with Barack Obama because of what is past Pastor said, then it will be just as easy for them to question candidates that are endorsed by Barack Obama or who endorsed Barack Obama.

Already, the Republicans are taking note of the lack of leadership in the Democratic party and they are using Barack Obama against their own.

If the ads aren't having any effect, Childers nevertheless isn't taking any chances and has put some distance with Obama. "He hasn't contacted me. I haven't contacted Senator Obama," he said in an interview. "I'm not running for president. I'm running for Congress. I'm staying focused and I'm on a mission."

GOP uses Obama to boost Republican candidates

There is no doubt that a Barack Obama endorsement and nomination will be helpful and essential for the Democrats to increase the margins in both the House and the Senate, however, if they allow him to be beat up so badly, they run the risk of tainting or outright nullifying the positive effects of his endorsement.

So while the Rev. Wright controversy might be good for the Clinton campaign given the impossibility they face in the delegate math, in the long run, allowing this unfair linking will eventually hurt the Democratic party as a whole. I hope the leadership of the Democratic Party take due notice.

Who is getting your reparations?

In 1968, about 40 years ago the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said the following:

At the very same time that America refused to give the Negro any land, through an act of Congress our government was giving away millions of acres of land in the West and the Midwest, which meant that it was willing to undergird its white peasants from Europe with an economic floor.

But not only did they give the land, they built land grant colleges with government money to teach them how to farm. Not only that, they provided county agents to further their expertise in farming. Not only that, they provided low interest rates in order that they could mechanize their farms.

Not only that, today many of these people are receiving millions of dollars in federal subsidies not to farm, and they are the very people telling the black man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps. And this is what we are faced with, and this is the reality.

Listen to him say it in the video entitled "Informational Gangsters (part 2), or see a transcript here at PBS:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/race/etc/script.html

In response to Barack Obama's call for a national conversation on race, Pat Buchanan responded in his A Brief for Whitey that:

"Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the '60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream"

When according to Wikipedia:

Buchanan's conclusions appear to be at odds with studies of U.S. Census Bureau data indicating whites receive a larger percentage of welfare benefits than blacks. The U.S. Department of Education reported that larger numbers of whites were recipients of financial aid in all its forms, including Pell grants and student loans, than any other racial group.

Some of the very same things that our leaders were concerned about in the past are still relevant, and we should keep abreast of them, more especially the youth who should be gearing themselves for leadership. When we analyze what Pat Buchanan said, and what the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said in 1968, and we analyze what is going on, we will see that while they have the Black community busy deciding whether or not to support or disown the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a parallel and elite welfare system that is off limits to Blacks is busy handing out billions of dollars in government welfare in the form of farm subsidies.

According to Reuters article

The White House has threatened to veto the five-year, $286 billion bill if it raises taxes or fails to end crop subsidies to the wealthiest Americans. Negotiators from the House and Senate are poised to write a bill blending legislation from each chamber.

http://www.reuters.com/article/bondsNews/idUSN3061602820080130?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

If you could make a choice right now, would you take the mainstream welfare or would you opt for the welfare that gives away land and a sizable subsidy. I would guess that you would take the later.

So while Black youth are killing each other in the streets over territories, these people are busy sitting down quietly and peacefully how to hand out millions of dollars to people in their constituency so that they can run and expand their farms, which is feeding, paying and keeping their family rich for today and tomorrow.

If there ever comes a day when all subsidies are stopped, I would take a guess as who will be self-sufficient and who will be fighting or joining the soup lines.