There is something to be said for good marketing. It can turn a corporate lawyer for a Republican congressional redistricting lawsuit, a defense attorney for a crooked Chicago cop, and a law enforcement stooge of Rich Daley and Rahm Emanuel into a progressive defender of all that is right and just. Good marketing can pull the wool over the eyes of many, win an endorsement from the Chicago Sun-Times, and boost a fraudulent chameleon and opportunist into a runoff with a real progressive.
Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney is the daughter of the most reviled but most effective Washington power broker since LBJ, former Vice President Dick Cheney. She rapidly ascended into the House Republican leadership without opposition after a single term by pushing another woman aside. An unaccredited Bible college graduate like poor Cathy McMorris Rogers couldn’t compete with the scion of a budding Republican dynasty. As Chairman of the House Republican Conference, Liz becomes the newest token woman in a GOP House leadership of faceless suits, but she’s anything but a token, she’s the understudy of a taciturn master in the dark art of right-wing Washington power politics and together they’ve placed her in the same leadership position her father once held.
This isn’t solely about the backroom dealings of a Republican Congresswoman with an influential Daddy. It’s about the long game they’ve been playing for 18 years. Dick has been preparing the University of Chicago trained lawyer to assume control of the family business. She’s been Daddy’s work wife for two decades. Her service in the Bush-Cheney transition and Administration as Principal Deputy Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs gave her a thorough grounding in the reality of our national security state and our role as the world’s remaining imperialist and hegemonic superpower. She’s been at his side through an official biography, memoir, and co-author of a hawkish foreign policy treatise that’s more of a love letter to Republican neo-Cons than it is a serious policy manifesto.
The Crown Princess of Plutocracy and Duchess of Endless War is really making a bid for America’s Throne: The Presidency. To do that she needs to gently and surreptitiously ease out the current Russian-Backed Republican Royal family of dynastic greed and corruption and assert her own hereditary claim to the throne like an English Princess in a Royal House in Phillipa Gregory’s historical fiction.
What that means is that as Mueller’s noose and more than a dozen criminal investigations collude to strangle Trump’s presidency to death, she sets herself up to defend and fortify Mike Pence as the next President so that he can tap her to replace him. Whether they win or lose, Liz Cheney will have the stature to pursue the presidency on her own in the next election and the dynastic heft to unify her party behind her like an American Margaret Thatcher.
Councilwoman Keisha Lance Bottoms is the current face of Atlanta’s decaying 44 year-old regime of corporate sponsored Black leadership. Endorsed by current Mayor Kasim Reed, the personification of Cosbyesque Pound Cake Conservatism, Keisha Lance Bottoms — young, gifted, and Black, fits the mold of telegenic, well-spoken tokens Atlantans always vote for.
Kasim and Keisha’s scheming to put her in the Mayor’s office would be an excellent successor to House of Cards or Scandal. I’m sure Shonda Rhimes could whip something up on the fly. Kasim brought the full weight of his Machiavellian brilliance to bear in destroying Keisha’s progressive rival Vincent Fort, and establishment threat Ceasar Mitchell. He managed all this while presiding over a massive bid rigging scandal, complete with indictments.
Atlanta’s Hillary Clinton, former Republican Mary Norwood, is the indefatigable obstacle standing between Keisha and the prize she’s had her eye on for years.
The second rise of Mary Norwood, and two other serious White contenders, foreshadows the loss of Georgia’s crown jewel of Black power and influence, and is exhibit A in why shitting on the Black poor for forty years, criminalizing homelessness and poverty, destroying public housing, and conspiring with the forces of gentrification is ultimately self-defeating. If you want to be HNIC, you should make damn sure there are plenty of Negroes to be in charge of.
Atlanta Mayors Young, Campbell, and Reed
The Black leadership class in the Black mecca of Atlanta, the birthplace of Martin Luther King Jr, was never as electrifying, thoughtful, and progressive as he was. The current malignancy, which masquerades as legitimate Black leadership, was formed from the embers of the civil rights movement following the assassination of Dr. King.
Once upon a time, Black politicians fought for “the least of these,” in keeping with the example of Dr. King’s poor people’s campaign, and his solidarity marches with Black working-class sanitation workers in Memphis before his death.
Atlanta sanitation workers, like those Dr. King died defending, fought for collective bargaining rights, and fair wages. Their strikes and demands caused swift reprisals from then Mayor Sam Massell, the city’s last White mayor. He fired Black sanitation workers and brought in scabs.
Maynard Jackson, then a City Councilman, cynically used his defense of the sanitation workers to create a name for himself, and marshal the Black community to defeat Massell for re-election. As Atlanta’s first Black mayor, Jackson betrayed the same sanitation workers, broke their strike, rebuffed their demands for fair pay, and hid behind the vocal support of Martin Luther King Sr, all while forging an incestuous relationship with the corporate power structure that got him reelected, and endures to this day.
Four decades of collusion with the corporate power structure has led us to this moment of gentrification, displacement, divestment, disillusionment, and quite frankly, delusion.
Black leadership in Atlanta has come to resemble the ostentatious greed & bullshit prosperity pimps that sell champagne wishes & caviar dreams to the desperate masses at the Black megachurches the area is known for.
Preserving Black power in Atlanta isn’t worth the cost if the price of a ticket is Keisha Lance Bottoms. A professional handkerchief head like her has about as much to offer Black people as the Wizard of Oz, or in our case, the Wiz.
We should ease on down the road that Black leadership depravity has paved, and vote for the White lady. She couldn’t possibly be any worse.
Horace Julian Bond, Civil Rights Icon, Politician, Writer, and University Lecturer, succumbed to a brief illness on Saturday night at the age of 75. A founder of the legendary Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committe, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, Julian Bond used his life and his activism to blaze a trail of compassionate principle for more than 50 years. 
Civil Rights wasn’t a hustle to Julian, but a calling and a way of life. Had Dr. King lived, I believe that his life and work would have had the same selfless contours as Julian Bond’s.
The Black Lives Matter Activists of today would do well to use Julian Bond’s life of activism and his writings as a blueprint for the power that they’re seeking. He understood the implacability of White Supremacy and what it took to force change:
Movements are not built on the helpful motions of a few, but by the determined actions of the mass. The chance at power comes in this country not in seizing a dean, but in seizing a welfare office; from organizing a strike of domestic workers; from beginning the arduous process of transferring strength and power from those who have it to those who do not.
This is not easy work. It is not easy because no one wants to do it. In an era of doing your own thing, no one wants to work with and for those whose thing is simply winning and maintaining the right to live. It means more than just a commitment of summer soldiers, although any soldiers are welcome in an understaffed army. It will require serious and systemic allocations of time and energy and resources.
It will require that rhetoric be turned into action, that school-book knowledge be applied to street situations, that theories be turned into practice.
It will require that politics comes to mean poeple and their problems, and not just elections and candidates.
It will require that we build a movement strong enough to take over in a peaceful and orderly fashion…
…And it will require that each of us keep in mind a prophecy written by the late Langston Hughes–that dreams deferred do explode. For if this dream is deferred much longer, then an explosion certainly will come.
Bond put his rhetoric into practice by fighting for and winning a seat in the Georgia House of Representatives in 1965. The segregationists of the day refused to seat him on the pretext that he opposed the War in Vietnam and was unable to swear an oath to U.S. and Georgia Constitutions. He fought them all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and won in a unanimous decision. He eventually served in both Houses of the Georgia Legislature and used his seat to push for maximization of voting rights, majority-minority congressional districts, and state legislative seats that better reflected Georgia’s population.
A full-spectrum progressive, Julian Bond, like Coretta Scott King, believed in full rights for LGBT individuals and that any exclusion of gay individuals from the promise of liberty was discriminatory. As a man of principle, Bond refused to attend the funeral of Mrs. King at Bishop Eddie Long’s New Birth Missionary Baptist Church because of Bishop Long’s flamboyant and aggressive anti-gay crusades, which later became a bitter joke after lawsuits by young men in the church accused Bishop Long of coercing them into sexual relationships.
Bond is survived by his wife Pamela and his five children from his first marriage, one of whom, Michael, followed his father into public service as a member of the Atlanta City Council.
Tuesday saw the election of NC State Representative Alma Adams (D-Guilford), as the next congresswoman from North Carolina’s 12th congressional district.
182 of 182 precincts – 100 percent
x-Alma Adams 14,927 – 44 percent
Malcolm Graham 7,482 – 22 percent
George Battle 4,426 – 13 percent
Marcus Brandon 2,974 – 9 percent
James Mitchell 2,032 – 6 percent
Curtis Osborne 1,934 – 6 percent
Adams, 67, a veteran member of the North Carolina General Assembly, succeeds Mel Watt, who resigned after being appointed by President Obama as the head of the federal Housing Finance Authority.
Adams, a retired college professor, is known for her colorful personality, forceful manner, and her distinctive hats. A former chairman of the NC Legislative Black Caucus, I predict that she’ll make a mark quickly and will chair the Congressional Black Caucus within 4 years. In succeeding Watt, she presents a sharp contrast. Watt is known for his unassuming manner and for surprising constituents and others by personally answering the phones in his congressional office. Adams, on the other hand, is rather imperious and known in Raleigh as someone difficult to work for.
This race should have ended differently. Given the footprint that Charlotte has in the 12th Congressional District, this race was State Senator Malcolm Graham’s to lose and he lost it. He never consolidated his base and Greensboro State Representative Marcus Brandon was never a threat to Alma’s despite his strong fundraising. His humiliating 9% showing was the shock of the evening.
Los Angeles NAACP President Leon Jenkins has resigned amid scrutiny surrounding the organization’s decision to give awards to disgraced Clippers owner Donald Sterling.
In his letter of resignation Thursday evening, Jenkins said the “legacy, history and reputation of the NAACP is more important to me than the presidency. In order to separate the Los Angeles NAACP and the NAACP from the negative exposure I have caused … I respectfully resign my position as president of the Los Angeles NAACP.”
The group granted Sterling an award in 2009, the same year the real estate magnate and L.A. Clippers owner paid $2.73 million to settle U.S. government claims that he refused to rent his apartments in Koreatown to Latinos and blacks.
The chapter was set to give Sterling a second award when a recording emerged in which a man said to be Sterling asked a female friend not to publicly associate with African Americans.
While Jenkins was a Detroit judge, he was indicted in 1988 on federal bribery, conspiracy, mail fraud and racketeering charges, according to records from the State Bar of California.
Authorities at the time alleged that Jenkins received gifts from those who appeared in his court and committed perjury, according to the records.
He was acquitted of criminal charges, but in 1994 the Michigan Supreme Court disbarred him, finding “overwhelming evidence” that Jenkins “sold his office and his public trust,” according to the bar records.
Jenkins was practicing law in California in 1991, serving as an attorney to the family of Latasha Harlins, an African American girl who was fatally shot by a Korean grocery store owner in South L.A., according to Times reports at the time.
In 1995, the state bar began looking into the misconduct allegations from Michigan. He was disbarred in 2001. He tried to be reinstated in 2006 but was rejected, according to records. He made another attempt in 2012.
Earlier this month, the bar turned him down, questioning whether he had the “moral fitness to resume the practice of law,” according to records. The bar stated that he had made misrepresentations on divorce papers and on his petition for reinstatement to the bar. Officials said he failed to disclose a $660,000 loan he owed former legal clients.
In his efforts to win back his law license, Jenkins said he was a rehabilitated man and a force for good in the community.
He said he’s raised $2 million for the NAACP’s 2011 national convention in Los Angeles. He also cited work with organizations that helped African Americans, including youth mentoring programs and voter outreach.
On the L.A. NAACP’s website, a biography for Jenkins notes he was “the youngest African American judge to serve in Michigan” but does not mention his legal troubles.
Jenkins did not return calls seeking comment Thursday.
By now you’ve heard of the toxic swirl of racism surrounding Billionaire Donald Sterling, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers NBA franchise. What you may not have heard about is the complicity of the Los Angeles NAACP in covering up for this infamous racist with a public relations problem. In 2009, the same year that Sterling settled a federal housing discrimination case, the largest in history, the LA NAACP gave Mr. Sterling a “lifetime achievement award.” Sterling, in fact, has paid out more than $8 million in housing discrimination cases related to his extensive real-estate holdngs. Apparently the President of Los Angeles NAACP, Leon Jenkins, felt this record of hate was worthy of celebration. The billionaire racist was so outstanding by Jenkins lights that he was set to award the bastard with yet another “lifetime achievement award” this year.
Donald Sterling is what happens when you make a disbarred attorney and defrocked judge the president of civil rights organization. The California State Bar picks up the story:
California subsequently disbarred Jenkins in 2001. He remains disbarred to this day. He is a crook and a charlatan that has sought to regain his lost prestige and credibility by remaking himself into a civil rights leader. Jenkins was elected President of the LA NAACP in 2008 and wasted no time in cozying up to billionaire racist Donald Sterling. He put his considerable charm and people skills to use to promote a racist at the expense of the organization’s mission. The billionaire, looking to clean up his tarnished image, opened his considerable pockets and broke Jenkins off a piece. This unconscionable corruption is grounds for immediate suspension by the national NAACP of all LA NAACP branch officers. The NAACP wouldn’t have to whore itself out to corporations and billionaire racists to stay afloat if it was actually doing something.
Betting against Barack Obama is always a losing proposition, but he’s in a race against history that no Democratic president has won in 74 years. Only twice in American history has there ever been three or more consecutive Democratic Administrations. Both occurrences happened about century apart. Fourteen years into the 21st Century, no party has held the White House for three consecutive terms and the odds are against it happening in 2016. Presidential elections in this country turn on one thing and one thing only: presidential performance. Barack Obama must accomplish something significant in a second term if Hillary Clinton is to have a second bite of the apple. If he doesn’t, the likelihood of her winning the presidency diminishes significantly and the permanence of health reform is jeopardized.
What is far more likely, unfortunately, is another Bush Presidency, which would be a disastrous apocalypse for everyone not firmly ensconced in the ruling class. Reaping the whirlwind of a Jeb Bush presidency makes me shudder. The reactionary agents of intolerance would be empowered to employ fear, ignorance, and toxic racial stereotypes as the building blocks of public policy. The predators of Wall Street would be unleashed to seek whomever they may devour. Finally, like his father and brother before him, Jeb would, “Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war.” If you believe in prayer, now would be a good time to gather all the “prayer warriors” you know and pray for Barack Obama. He needs all the help he can get.
Mitt Romney is the living embodiment of a President from Hollywood central casting. His all-American good looks and patrician bearing are reassuring to some folk and harkens back to the halcyon days of yesteryear when times were simple and dark people, women and gays knew their proper places. Following the lead of Congressional Republicans in racializing Obama’s policy agenda, Mitt Romney’s strategists, conscious of their diminishing odds of winning this election, elected to frame their horse’s throwback candidacy in a way that intentionally stokes a sense of white racial resentment. President Obama’s every thought, word and deed is construed as a racial attack on God-fearing, taxpaying white Americans. Whites are cast as the victims in this alternate Republican universe and Mitt Romney is the savior they’ve been praying for. It is a lie, like everything the modern Republican Party stands for. It doesn’t matter how confidently Mitt Romney recites his lies. A confident lie is still a lie. Remain calm. There is nothing that transpired yesterday between the contenders to America’s throne that should disturb any Obama partisan.
Let’s review. In the span of 50 years, we’ve gone from, “Segregation Now, Segregation Tomorrow, Segregation Forever,” to the eleventh great grandson of the first enslaved African serving as President of the United States. God is speaking through this recent revelation in Obama’s family tree. Can you hear him? I believe in my sanctified soul that Barack Obama’s miraculous rise to the presidency was predestined. The African ancestry traceable through his “white” mother shatters the myth of white supremacy and cleanses the stain of chattel slavery. In Jeremiah 1:5, God tells his prophet, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” Jeremiah 1:10 states, “See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.” Every step this brotha has taken in the last thirty years has been ordered by The One Most High.
Eight years ago, Barack Obama was a minor state legislator nobody had ever heard of. He gamely took on the State Comptroller and a Multi-Millionaire Businessman for the chance to represent Illinois in the U.S. Senate. Heavily outspent, he vanquished them both. Plucked from obscurity by John Kerry to deliver the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, he electrified the nation. Two opponents, including his attractive Republican opponent, self-destructed in sex-scandals. Smears, misinformation and right-wing distortions, many of the same we hear today, were employed by an unhinged Republican to stop his rise. None worked. Four years later he went on to defeat the most formidible political dynasty the Democratic Party has ever produced to claim the Democratic nomination for President. The Clintons questioned his fitness for the Presidency and Bill Clinton dismissed his ambition as a “fairytale” and prompted Teddy Kennedy to endorse Obama after letting rip, “A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee.” Oh, how the worm has turned. President and Mrs. Clinton both serve at Obama’s pleasure now.
We love him because he has always displayed the cool serenity and regal dignity that every child of God should emulate. This is the same president that shamed Donald Trump on Wednesday, punked his ass contemptuously on Saturday, and killed Bin Laden on Sunday. Don’t believe for one minute that an empty suit like Mitt Romney got under our president’s skin last night. Don’t fall for that. Obama set a trap and Romney took the bait. Romney shook his etch-a-sketch so hard that he broke it. This is the same president that allowed Republican extremism and obstructionism to trap them into the untenable position of opposing tax cuts, a grand bargain on deficit reduction and a debt limit extension. To hear some pundits tell it, Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he always seems to come out on top.
Romney still has much to answer for. The specificity of his budget and tax plan that journalists and pundits were critical of earlier in the week sure as hell didn’t materialize last night. What we heard was a lot of nonsensical doubletalk and backpedalling from what he was saying during the primaries. The Obama for America campaign is sure to take a hefty pound of flesh from Romney for his evasions and falsehoods. The ads should pretty much write themselves. All one has to do is stack Romney’s inconsistencies on top of one another and call it a damn day.
The corporate media knows that this race was over a long time ago. It doesn’t want to give up the ghost just yet because it invests the empty theatrics and ridiculous posturing of the modern presidential debate with more meaning than the serious policy discussions it was designed to facilitate. The contention that stagecraft means more than statecraft is a serious indictment of our fourth estate and an indication that the systemic corruption beneath the Media’s shiny façade threatens our democracy. We need to continue working, watching and praying for healing and racial reconciliation in our country.
There is a hymn that goes, “We’ve come this far by faith. Leaning on the Lord. Trusting in His holy word… Just the other day I heard someone say he didn’t believe in God’s word. But I can truly say that God has made a way. And He’s never failed me yet. That’s why we’ve come this far by faith.”
Cory Booker, Chris Christie
I’ve got a confession to make: I’ve got a bug up my ass about Chris Christie. He scares me in a way that no Republican does. It occurs to me that as Mitt Romney sinks into the quicksand of evasive, duplicitous bullshit of his own making, Chris Christie would be having a much better go of it this year against President Obama. Although I’m loathe to writing the following words, I must acknowledge that Ann Coulter, the High Priestess of Hate, was right when she said, “If you don’t run Chris Christie, Romney will be the nominee and we’ll lose.” And lose they will this year. Hallelujah! Thank you, Jesus!
The governor of New Jersey isn’t a wooden establishment patrician that lacks a common touch. He is a relatable everyman that has a broad appeal, which keeps me up at night. If he’s smart, he’ll use Ann Coulter as a battering ram and bridge to the fringe crazies she’s made a fortune from as a best-selling author. Her support alone makes him viable and his recent cozying up to a racist assclown like Steve King indicates he’s quite serious about exploring a run in 2016. I miss the good ole days when “imminent threats” were dealt with by preemptive war. Chris Christie is an imminent threat to Democratic designs on the White House in 2016 and we need to declare war on his ambitions. Now!
That’s where Cory Booker comes in. The only way to head off Chris Christie in 2016 is to defeat him in 2013. I’m not one of those who believe Christie won’t run for re-election. He loves the power too much and New Jersey has one of the most powerful governorships in the nation. There’s no better way to position oneself on the right than to vanquish an ambitious Negro for power. If he’s smart, Christie will assemble some of the best GOP talent in 2013 and their job will be to amass a huge war chest and a landslide victory in preparation for 2016. I remain unconvinced that Christie is beatable in 2013, but I know full well that Cory Booker is the only contender that could pull off that heavy lift.
Booker, if he’s also smart, will assemble the best talent the Democratic Party has to offer and will turn 2013 into a marquee race and opening skirmish for 2016. All he has to do is sell his party on the necessity of defeating Christie and eliminating him as a future threat. He should be able to do that by sweet talking some heavyweight Obama bundlers into helping him out. Get your popcorn, people. This race is gonna be the fun one to watch.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has abandoned all pretense of giving a shit about assisting Mitt Romney in toppling Barack Obama this year and has started running in earnest for 2016. This week, the same politician who expressed disdain for “the crazies” in his party flew to Iowa to cozy up to just that in the person of Iowa Congressman Steve King. The gentleman from Iowa has distinguished himself during his tenure in Congress as Iowa’s chief race-baiter, birther, homophobe, misogynist and conspiracy theorist.
If Christie is to have any hope of making inroads with the Hawkeye state’s fringe Right, the path to power goes directly through Western Iowa’s Birther King. The lamestream media would do well to pay attention to how their right-wing golden boy compromises his integrity and jettisons his moderation in the pursuit of the 2016 Republican Presidential Nomination. Dostoevsky said it best, “Power is only given to those who lower themselves to pick it up.” I can think of nothing lower than fundraising for and extoling the virtues of a bigoted troglodyte like Steve King.
Dear Mr. Leroy,
I thought of you today.
It was the Mad Men that did it.
Watching the pornographic misogyny of that celluloid homage to white masculinity made me think of your black ass.
I looked up to you as a boy.
Silly me.
Daddy was no longer in the picture and none of Mama’s boyfriends showed any interest in me except the fucker that used to sit me on his lap and fondle my tiny tool box.
I remember your dapper three piece suits and the aura of your authority as the only black man to head a state agency.
You hired Mama to be your right hand in charge of the steno pool.
I remember the seriousness of the office and being placed at an old typewriter to distract from the fact that Mama was working overtime.
You seemed like such a serious brotha and Mama was important because you were.
You had Mama taking the minutes for the commission and allowed her to drive a state car.
Those were the days….
All that power musta went to your damn head. Not that one, the other one. The small one you primarily use to think with.
Mama told me how you pinched her ass, looked down her blouse, and damn near chased her around the desk.
I guess you thought that was a fringe benefit of being in charge of Equal Employment Opportunity.
The only thing that differentiates your self-loathing sorry ass from Clarence Thomas is that I think you actually gave a shit about blackfolks despite the Republican pedigree.
If only Clarence had lost himself down a bottle of crown royal like you have…
Fuck You.
Sincerely,
A Mama’s Boy named Skeptical
| Mitt Romney | 451972 | 38.00% | |
| Rick Santorum | 439932 | 37.00% | |
| Newt Gingrich | 173797 | 14.60% | |
| Ron Paul | 110289 | 9.30% | |
| Rick Perry | 7367 | 0.60% | |
| Jon Huntsman | 6350 | 0.50% |
| Rick Santorum | 82764 | 33.70% | |
| Mitt Romney | 69088 | 28.20% | |
| Newt Gingrich | 66739 | 27.20% | |
| Ron Paul | 24190 | 9.90% | |
| Rick Perry | 1148 | 0.50% | |
| Michele Bachmann | 845 | 0.30% | |
| Jon Huntsman | 635 | 0.30% |
| Rick Santorum | 178511 | 37.30% | |
| Mitt Romney | 133486 | 27.90% | |
| Newt Gingrich | 113870 | 23.80% | |
| Ron Paul | 43750 | 9.10% | |
| Uncommitted | 2856 | 0.60% | |
| Rick Perry | 1673 | 0.30% | |
| Michele Bachmann | 1656 | 0.30% | |
| Jon Huntsman | 1122 | 0.20% | |
| Buddy Roemer | 779 | 0.20% | |
| Gary Johnson | 515 | 0.10% |
| Mitt Romney | 247385 | 72.00% | |
| Rick Santorum | 41838 | 12.20% | |
| Ron Paul | 32904 | 9.60% | |
| Newt Gingrich | 16012 | 4.70% | |
| Jon Huntsman | 2071 | 0.60% | |
| No Preference | 1691 | 0.50% | |
| Rick Perry | 929 | 0.30% | |
| Michele Bachmann | 836 | 0.20% |
| Newt Gingrich | 404593 | 47.50% | |
| Mitt Romney | 218087 | 25.60% | |
| Rick Santorum | 167792 | 19.70% | |
| Ron Paul | 55334 | 6.50% | |
| Jon Huntsman | 1681 | 0.20% | |
| Michele Bachmann | 1657 | 0.20% | |
| Rick Perry | 1650 | 0.20% | |
| Buddy Roemer | 1088 | 0.10% | |
| Gary Johnson | 723 | 0.10% |
| Mitt Romney | 5326 | 76.30% | |
| Ron Paul | 813 | 11.60% | |
| Rick Santorum | 623 | 8.90% | |
| Newt Gingrich | 214 | 3.10% | |
| Buddy Roemer | 5 | 0.10% |
| Mitt Romney | 157127 | 59.50% | |
| Ron Paul | 107120 | 40.50% |
| Mitt Romney | 17407 | 40.30% | |
| Ron Paul | 10836 | 25.10% | |
| Rick Santorum | 10089 | 23.40% | |
| Newt Gingrich | 3568 | 8.30% | |
| Jon Huntsman | 877 | 2.00% | |
| Rick Perry | 375 | 0.90% |
HAT TIP: By David Giambusso/The Star-Ledger
Payne announced last month he was under treatment for colon cancer but said that he expected to make a full recovery. Last week, though, his health took a turn for the worse.
He was hospitalized at Georgetown University Hospital, but on Friday was flown back to New Jersey on a medical transport. After arriving at Teterboro airport, he was taken to St. Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston. Payne, a Democrat who represented New Jersey’s 10th congressional district for 23 years, was placed in hospice care and died early this morning.
The state’s first — and currently its only — black congressman, Payne headed one of Newark’s most powerful political dynasties. His son Donald Payne Jr. is the Newark City Council president, as well as an Essex County Freeholder. His brother and lifelong political partner, William, is a former state assemblyman.
“He’s had a tremendous impact on the state, country and the world,” William Payne said.
Payne was up for re-election this year and facing a primary in June. Despite his condition, he vowed to run again only last month and refused to take a leave of absence.
A former teacher, insurance executive, city councilman, and county freeholder, Payne’s lifelong dream was to become a congressman. In 1988 he finally achieved that goal and was returned to Congress 11 times — by some of the widest margins in New Jersey congressional history.
While in the House of Representatives, Payne was known as a tireless advocate for his constituents, a champion of education and a de facto ambassador to Africa. He helped secure $100 million to help prevent and treat Malaria and HIV/AIDS, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa.
“New Jersey has lost one of its greatest leaders in the fight for equality and fairness for all Americans, and one of the greatest advocates for families of the Garden State,” said U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, whose 8th district shared parts of Montclair, South Orange and West Orange with Payne.
“Donald Payne was a true trailblazer – a champion for education and civil rights who sought to combat injustice all over the world. I will greatly miss my friend and brother,” Pascrell said in a statement released this morning.
Payne was recognized in Congress for having the most supportive record on issues regarding the Northern Ireland peace process. He helped win passage of a resolution declaring the killing in Darfur genocide and he authored the Sudan Peace Act, facilitating famine relief efforts.
State Sen. Richard Codey called Payne’s legacy a strong one, and one that merits emulation at all levels of government, particularly with regard to oppressed peoples.
“He was bigger than life but never conducted himself that way,” Codey said by phone this morning. “If you were violating somebody’s rights, you better get out of the way.”
Although Payne was well-known for his interest in African affairs, Payne, for instance, also long supported peace initiatives to end sectarian violence in Ireland, Codey said.
“People always associated him with Africa and advocating for Darfur and he did, but color didn’t matter to him, just your civil rights,” he said.
Wed, Feb. 29, 2012, 11:52 AM
By Martha Woodall, Mark Fazlollah, Kristen A. Graham, and Joseph Tanfani
INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS
Federal authorities are investigating why a company owned by the son of U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah was paid $450,000 by an education firm that has received millions in contracts from the Philadelphia School District, according to sources familiar with the probe.
Agents from the FBI and U.S. Treasury Department served two search warrants early Wednesday for Chaka Fattah Jr.’s records, the first at his apartment at the Residences at the Ritz-Carlton.
Shulick
They also seized Fattah’s records and a computer from the Logan Square law office of David T. Shulick. He is president of Delaware Valley High School, a for-profit company that contracts with school districts to educate students with discipline problems.
The younger Fattah, 29, known as “Chip,” is owner of a consulting company called 259 Strategies L.L.C. that works as a subcontractor for Shulick’s companies. Fattah Jr. has working space at the law office.
The $450,000 payment from Shulick’s company is more than 10 percent of the approximately $4 million that Delaware Valley will receive from the School District this year.
Ron Sarachan
“We are cooperating with the investigation,” said attorney Ronald A. Sarachan, who jointly is representing Fattah with Gregory P. Miller. “We’ve been in communication with the government.”
Sarachan said he was “hopeful” that the investigation would be quickly resolved.
Shulick, who was interviewed Wednesday morning by agents at his home, said he was told that neither he nor Delaware Valley were the focus of the investigation.
“It doesn’t have anything to do with the school,” Shulick said. “We have nothing to hide, and we let them in and let them search [Fattah Jr.’s] office unfettered.”
In a later e-mailed statement, Shulick said Fattah Jr. “is being victimized merely because his last name is ‘Fattah.’ ”
” . . . He is dealing with issues that nobody without the last name ‘Fattah’ would have to deal with,” Shulick wrote.
The FBI has been asking questions about Fattah Jr.’s business operations for at least a year.
In January 2011, agents went to the South Florida home of Mikel Jones, a lawyer and childhood friend of Fattah Sr., as part of an investigation into Jones’ finances.
During a daylong conversation, they also asked Jones why he had paid more than $90,000 to 259 Strategies and to American Royalty, another Fattah Jr. firm that provided luxury services to well-heeled clients, according to an FBI document that summarized the conversation.
It surfaced last year in a federal fraud case against Jones. He was convicted and is appealing.
Jones, who ran a personal injury law firm, told the agents that he hired the younger Fattah to help expand his business – and because Fattah had “access,” the document said.
The FBI said Jones told them Fattah “had some good ideas, but he could not remember any of them offhand.”
“I know what this looks like, but there was no quid pro quo,” Jones told the agents, the document said.
“Did I overpay him? Was it a good investment, strictly speaking? No, but I was desperate and he had access,” Jones said. The nature of that access was not described.
In an interview with The Inquirer last year, Fattah Jr. said his work for Jones had nothing to do with providing access to his father or anyone else.
“I came up with a lot of ideas,” he said. “Mr. Jones was a client of my concierge service, and I also acted as a management consultant in terms of finding new clients for his personal injury firm, period.”
Fattah declined to go into detail on his work for Jones, but said that many of the payments from clients were used to purchase goods or services for them. American Royalty charged membership fees.
“We might get a call at 3 a.m. saying a client needs a jet in the morning,” he said in a 2007 interview with the Philadelphia Business Journal. “We have access to one of the top private jet companies in the country, so we’re able to make that happen.”
In 2007, the Capital Grille restaurant in Philadelphia filed a police report alleging that American Royalty had failed to pay a $15,000 bill. Fattah settled the tab, saying it was run up by a client.
Federal agents arrived about 6:40 a.m. Wednesday outside Fattah’s home, and at Shulick’s office shortly after 10 a.m. They left the law office about 50 minutes later, carrying a Dell desktop computer and boxes of records.
Sources with knowledge of the investigation said that while some agents were serving search warrants and collecting documents at Fattah Jr.’s residence and the law office, other agents were conducting interviews with other people, including Shulick.
Shulick said he believes that the inquiry is focused on the younger Fattah, who has been doing work for Shulick since 2009, according to documents and interviews. Shulick said Fattah Jr. works as “a contracted employee” for the law firm, the school, and his charity, the Judith B. Shulick Memorial Foundation, named for his mother.
Last May, when Shulick threw out the first pitch at a Phillies game, Fattah Jr. posted a video on YouTube.
Earlier this month, Fattah Jr. appeared before the York City school board pitching a $1.5 million contract for Delaware Valley and describing himself as the company’s director of business development, according to a published report.
Rep. Fattah has been a supporter of Shulick’s schools as well.
He sought a $375,000 federal transportation grant to replace the school’s fleet with “green clean fuel burning vehicles,” according to his website. The grant was not approved.
Rep. Fattah, whose district covers parts of Philadelphia and Montgomery County, is the senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee and has long pushed for education funding.
“I stand by my son,” he said in a statement. “Nothing came of the request for funds, and my son had nothing to do with any request for funds.” He said he would “await the results of the investigation before making further comment.”
His spokesman, Ron Goldwyn, said the investigation does not involve Fattah Sr. or the congressional office.
Sorry Y’all, I just can’t get over black women of my generation willing to lower themselves to play mammies that whitewash the Jim Crow subjugation of our people while Barack and Michelle Obama are living in the White House. There is something profoundly deceitful about that which completely ignores the struggle to go from the slave quarters to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
While I applaud the Academy for selecting the incomparable Meryl Streep for Best Actress, any organization that could nominate The Help for a Best Picture nod is irredeemably evil. It is almost criminal that Black actors can only be recognized for roles that debase & defame black people as pathological and dysfunctional stereotypes.
I realize that it is hard out here for black actors, but on some level don’t Whoopi, Halle, Taraji, Gabourey, Monique,Viola, Octavia and their Black brothers, have a responsibility for the characters they’re willing to portray given the blatant racism in Hollywood? Is the validation of Whitefolks really that valuable?
Skeptical Brotha 