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Your topic ” Revolving Credit - CC-DebtConsolidation.com was interesting when I found it on Saturday searching for equity lenders…

The CWBA, like the failed civil rights movement (CRM) can never help black achieve equality because equity can only be achieved through independence and the CWBA is about dependency on the dominant society for redress. It is a dead end and can only perpetuate our subordination by reinforcing the mainstream’s paternalistic role.

more articles: aframnews.com

In our grant proposal that was awarded by the W.H.Kellogg Foundation

Here below is the copy of the email I sent to that Steering Committee

leon davis to hopepolicycomm., HOPEsteeringco., hank, Alisa, Navina
show details Jul 4

Hello fellow committee members and staff

As Co-Chair of Local Sustainable Economic Development I’m requesting that 20 minutes economic report & presentation update be added to the agenda for the next steering committee meeting July 10th

This email is a small overview of the report & presentation which will give some detail for the 7 things needed for local sustainable economic development

#1. Recognize the 4 pillars of destruction that are exclusive to the flatlands most vulnerable neighborhoods communities and the link of between so that link can be broken.

The 4 Pillars of Destruction are

Economic (the ceiling) = i.e. the total lack of a committee to recapture wealth, very limited disposal income

Health (the left side wall) = i.e. the highest health disparity of type 2 diabetes, chronic illnesses and preventable disease

Education (the right wall) = i.e.the highest high school drop-out rate, the lowest college participation or higher education

Crime & Property (the floor) = i.e. the highest murder and other violent crimes and the lowest property value

These 4 pillars are so interconnected they form THE BOX or TUNNEL OF DESPAIR

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The Box or Tunnel of Despair apply such pressure it is guarantee to keep the vast majority of communities not only poor but destitute and poverty

Inside this box there is a economic ceiling that does not allow for the recapturing of community wealth on a large scale basis and actively promote the dysfunctional system of minimal access to affordable healthy foods.

Which effect the left side wall of health of the community and keep them from preventable chronic illness and disease.

Which also affects the right side wall of education leaving the children in these communities at a total disadvantage that reflected in the high school drop-out rate

Which take us to the ground floor of crime & property with no economic wealth or hope for higher education people inside the box are more tempted for illegal sources of revenue, drugs which further contribute to the health of the family and community adding to that pillar, senseless violence like gangs, murders and car jacking fighting over crumbs bringing down property value.

All of the Maps & Meta Analysis confirm this!!

O.K TELL ME SOMETHING I DON’T KNOW

#2. We must show that only a well coordinated infrastructure that address all 4 areas simultaneously is the ONLY way to break the links that combine the pillars that form their box or tunnel of despair

We must show the only mechanism that empower the communities to access and control their own food source is their ability to recapture their wealth through a systemic infrastructure

Which they control by the by-law and governing of broad of community supervisors (Holding Company) that over see a system of local farmer agreements, distribution & processing of local affordable healthy delivered to a network of community owned stores.

Done on a scale that effect all the vulnerable neighborhoods trough out the flatlands 1 store for every 5,000 resident or about 60 store, the store should be as prevalent & accessible as the corner store and liquored store as to become the public face for the entire system.

The network will consist of working with local farmers that agrees to provides them with a better return on the dollar then they are presently getting from traditional grocers at .25 on the dollar because of the middleman, the community network can guarantee a return of .55 on the dollar, because the network will also have distribution & processing property assets who’s workforce will come from the community and only a community that has working knowledge with how they access and distribute their food sources can make such a agreement.

#3. Show the win-win benefits & result of the system that address all 4 pillars because of the community ownership of the stores

(a) 200,000,000 million dollars of recapture revenue a month staying in the flatlands + 150,0000 new investors brought online into the stock market by virtue of being owners through the collective buying power of the community

(b) Affordable healthy food now access by all of Oakland residents by reason of the health food store prevalent

(c) Family able to save to send their kid to college

(d) Crime cut by 50%

(e) Community having the sense of ownership because the store bring more community involvement

(f) Property Values increases, people wanting to live in area they can recapture their wealth

(g) Larger tax base and fewer welfare recipients

(i) High growth exit from recession economy & depression stopper

#4. Show the initial up front cost of 300,000,000 millions dollars (that the high end) is pale in comparison to the benefits of the healthy food store, which would cost no more then your average corner store (you can even convert houses into healthy food stores).

At 3 million x 60 store = 180,000 million dollars (that the high end), the distribution & processing assets can be obtain with favorable negations with city because of the benefit also land trust

Even with a proficient operation & low overhead with store operation 4-8 employees, distribution & processing workers, driver you are still looking at 350 new job instantly

#5. Show how the community owned store is fuel that will drive all of the buckets the steering committee hold so dear like

Safe, Green Spaces for Physical Activity and Play - You cant have that when the many are disenfranchised get real !! — however- - With the community now receiving the real result of profit sharing check in their pocket they have the resource them shelve for community policing.

Safe, Walkable Neighborhoods - Same answer , the Box or Tunnel of Despair prevent it - -however– With the community now receiving the real result of profit sharing check in their pocket they have the resource themselves for community policing.

Neighborhood Community Centers, Recreational Programs - Check the news the government is cutting more and more services –however– with the recapture of wealth the community broad of supervisors can write in the by-law that 15% of the profit can go more community center & recreational program

#6. Change the meaning of the word “Community Ownership”

From meaning someone in the “community” who own something (the few)

To meaning everybody in the Community owning something (the many)

#7. Declare as a steering committee with one voice and one minds the absolute insistent in our action plan that we need to have in place stores owned by the communities in order to recapture wealth and fight all 4 pillars

We must submit a plan that tell Endowment foundations, state & city official and all civic and corporate leaders that it is in their best interest to provide the up front cost of 300,000 million (that the high end) so that we can install the infrastructure

Then write up the framework of how the community board of supervisors (Holding Company) is govern the system that empowers these disenfranchise communities to be able to take back their neighborhoods and get out of the Box or Tunnel of Despair

Then we will serve as a model city that show how a society can band together in such a unselfish way as to create a paradigm shift that will change the way communities live together

Otherwise

YOU GET WHAT YOU GOT!

Health Care Reform is needed - if we are going to have a viable health workforce - who will have access to quality health care - with out having to deal with issues of disparity within the health care delivery systems or access to quality health care issues.

Stimulus Funding is not being fairly distributed to encourage economic growth in the areas most needed. Why? Because the expertise needed to apply for these types of funds is problematic - from the technical expertise and manpower perspective. Most areas with the greatest needs don’t have “shovel-ready projects”.

If President Obama would continue to provide housing tax credit incentives, pushing more income tax on the wealthy, and less on those who are middle class and poor, this would be an excellent step in the right direction to expand the middle class, and bring individuals out of poverty.

My last point, Welfare to Work Programs are great - but employers must understand the language of the person they are trying to help, and the person must understand the language of industry. Bridges Out of Poverty - Nancy Payne Author - is the best book I have read which helps to bridge this gap so good employees are retained. Is helps to create the needed standard of understanding, and the “trust factor” which is lost by so many who are already having a difficult time.

OWN, OR BE OWNED

Main Street Ventures is an entrepreneurial magnet:
• Establishing a self-funding community owned economic development
• Creating access to naturally sustainable jobs and competitive market advantages.
• Keeping locally generated profits flowing back into our own local communities.
• Maintaining a commitment to a common good with an equitable benefit for all participants.
• Assuring complete transparency in all management and financial affairs.
• Creating a climate in which member owners achieve maximum financial independence.
• Defining human dignity, every individual’s right to knowledge, opportunity and ownership.
• Continually focused on growth of member’s capital and depth of services offered.
• Promoting Human Dignity, as a highly sought after mark of service and quality.

MEMBERSHIP
Main Street Ventures start-up and ongoing revenue sources are a $25 membership registration fee plus opening a $50 (a minimum of 5 Venture Capital units @ $10) voting right investment account; applicable to all microenterprise and cooperative members. Common good and mutual aid is our strategy; each specific industry division formed for complimentary results, easily divided, combined, duplicated and/or franchised, will grow and expand by retaining a portion of patronage funds allocated to members at the end of each year.

Main Street Ventures, builds 100% ownership on our Main Street not on their Wall Street.
Our money - used where we need it - small investments producing big results.

Through natural cooperative principles, each MSV member, regardless of number of units owned, has only one vote… and they can use the full power of their vote:
• To adopt and/or amend articles of incorporation.
• To elect and/or if necessary, remove members of the Board of Directors.
• To decide on expansion or consolidation with other worker/employee owned operations.
• To assure compliance with rules applicable to articles, bylaws and membership contracts.

Main Street Ventures is a unique starting gate for good ideas and profitable business opportunities… funding its own operations and venture capital needs and spawning industry specific worker cooperatives and microenterprises.
Everyone has had new and different ideas —worth listening to and perhaps worth acting on-— this is what makes MSV methodologies vitally necessary; a community-wide friendly way of connecting the successful with the not yet successful telling the every-day American that regardless of how high or low tech their product idea or service concept may be, they will have a fair and equal chance to turn their dreams into reality.
This unique gathering of local resources and human energies will act like a magnet, attracting creative professionals, and amateurs to utilize MSV as their home base, where they can maximize their skills and abilities to invent, build, keep, and re-circulate their own profits locally… creating wealth and retaining ownership in their own productivity.

In defining life’s choices Shakespeare said… “to be, or not to be”
In today’s economy, our only choice must be… “own, or be owned”

We need to encourage our communities to be self-sufficient by taking control of their neighborhoods. What if we could purchases services for our homes such as a group. example: homeowners insurance,food, repair services, appliances, & etc. Just to think most of my neighbors either use State Farm or Allstate as their homeowners insurance carriers, why can’t we purchase as a neighborhood group, imagine if we purchase all of our goods and services that way. We would enpower our neighborhoods just with basic services.

there are some famous words that jfk used in his inauragtion speech that i will never forget… ask not what your country can do for you as what you can do for your country…. then and now i am doing just that in the community that i grew up in as it is an unincorporated rural community enough said… now i can guaranteed you that years from now many will be reciting the late senator kennedy’s quotes just as we did his brothers and other men and women of integrity.

Gary Orfield, Prof. of Education, Law, Political Science and Urban Policy, UCLA
Co-Director, Civil Rights Project

I’m linking to it over at my blog, Poverty in America, where I wrote a much more basic analysis of the case earlier this week:

http://uspoverty.change.org/blog/view/desegrating_westchester

http://valuethemeal.blogspot.com/

There are many myths and misinformation circulating around about how much immgrants do to cause damage to our way of life. In fact, they add to the richness of our quality of life. From many of the jobs they do, and for their contributions to Social Security.

Without getting into a debate here, I believe if the debate is led by the President, we can have a much more civil discourse on an issue that affects families, students, and so many other people. The raids have done much to break up families causing separations that may last years. We must work to re unite families and work together to resolve an issue that our country has helped to create.

Workers would not come to our country if there were not jobs. Now that we face a very difficult economic period - we must work together to ensure the debate does not get more hateful and emotional.

Can we just work it out?

Administer this program through HUD’s community development block grant program (which is similar but underfunded and does not concentrate on distressed neighborhoods) where there is excellent new leadership under Shaun Donovan. Local and state government recipients of the funding should whenever feasible provide funding through existing community based organizations and service agencies, establishing city-wide consortiums with civic, governmental and grass roots boards of directors that apportion the funding and in many cases carry out these strategies and programs.

I am semi-retired, have many years of experience in this work, and would be glad to help draft a comprehensive legislative proposal of this sort.

M-SLICE mission is to advocate for the equitable distribution of public and private investments to transition traditionally underserved communities into healthy and vibrant places to live, work and play throughout Metro St. Louis.

VISION:

M-SLICE vision is to collectively identify community needs and strategically implement programs to transform our neighborhoods into socially and economically vibrant places to live, work, play and thrive.

M-SLICE SERVICE AREA:

Our boundaries target underserved areas within the Metro St. Louis area including East St. Louis.

ADVOCACY & PROGRAM ACTIVITIES:

M-SLICE members have identified 4 initiatives that focus on developing a comprehensive community/economic development strategy that promotes the realization of 1) healthy and green communities, 2) business development and expansion for job creation, 3) grassroots leadership development, and 4) sustainability issues such as preserving and expanding mass transportation.

For more information about membership and volunteer opportunities contact:

Romona Taylor Williams
Steering Committee, Chair
314-363-5229 (mobile)

Detroit’s gonna recover, im sure.

http://www.nyc.gov/html/ops/nycstim/html/home/home.shtml

Another fact is that the largest percentage of foreclosures now are ARM mortgages. Why would anyone sign an ARM, except to maximize the size, location, or value of the house you can get, relative to the lowest payment possible. Then since the credit bubble led to a drastic over pricing in the housing market, the ARM’s started resetting when the markets the process of releveling themselves.

Now, some ARM mortgage holders are happy because rates are again low, but don’t you wonder how the market will react to 50 to 100 billion of government bond being sold to fund the TARP? Do any memories of the dramatic post WW1 Germany levels of stagflation come to mind?

I am not against people owning their own homes, but I would rather teach a man to fish, then jsut give him a fish. One method he comes back to me later for more, and the other he now steps away from me so I can help more.

However, from what little I’ve read, it seems that this option hasn’t been widely implemented. Barriers to participation may include lack of awareness on the part of food stamp clients and restaurants, but there are also administrative issues that may deter restaurants–for instance, I believe food stamp purchases are exempt from sales tax, so a restaurant has to be willing to aborb the sales tax themselves. I did read a newspaper article about how this option tended to be more attractive to fast food restaurants like Subway in areas with large homeless populations (like San Francisco’s Tenderloin) where restaurants could get a substantial boost from homeless customers’ new food stamp purchasing power.

Of course, that doesn’t accomplish much toward the goal of healthy, fresh food consumption…but ethical dilemma aside, it’s interesting that there’s at least a minimal policy foundation for non-traditional food stamp use.

On that note, it’s also worth pointing out that food stamp acceptance and use at farmers markets is increasing (at least in New York) and food stamps can also be applied to Community Supported Agriculture membership. Just Food in NYC helps coordinate and provide TA to numerous CSAs in the city; and their Community Food Education program also holds workshops on nutrition, wellness, local eating, and healthy food cooking and storage. http://www.justfood.org/jf/index.html

Sure, we should all eat out less. My husband and I prepare almost all of our meals at home and bring lunches to the office when we can, but that habit is becoming the exception even in the middle class. This November 2000 article (http://www.restaurant.org/rusa/magArticle.cfm?ArticleID=138) says Americans eat out at least four meals a week, but I would guess the number is even higher in 2009. Why would a low-income family working long hours and relying on public transportation have a better chance of preparing home-cooked meals regularly than a middle class family?

Is prepared food really more expensive than buying groceries and making meals at home? Yes, marginally, but when it’s hard to get fresh produce into low income areas and when we’re all guilty of letting good produce go to waste in the fridge because we can’t use it fast enough, maybe it makes more sense to offer prepared healthy meals and allow for the use of food stamps to get it.

So many people my age admit they’re terrible cooks or that they have just a few things they know how to make well. Don’t get me wrong… I’m a proponent of the family dinner table and home cooked meals. But when I look around and that’s just not the reality in any economic class any more, I think it’s disingenuous to expect that low-income families need to emulate that value any more than anyone else. Look at how much prepared food is offered at grocery stores as an example of how our culture had shifted.

Couldn’t we find a way to bring an economy of scale to prepared healthy meals? And let’s bring food stamps up to date by letting people use them for prepared food.

About the content, the stimulus being passed by congress will now give more money to people who don’t produce anything and can not pay it back - just like getting a low-income person a loan. Why did Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fail? Was this not government oversight? Weren’t they there to lend to the low-income person? WHY DID THEY FAIL??? If I were a bank, I would WANT to lend to a person that COULD pay it back, with interest, not default on it. Of course if you’re forced to (i.e. CRA) then you have no choice. Also, the borrower is at fault as well - don’t get a loan you CAN’T pay back. The banks weren’t FORCING people to get loans. People had to walk in a apply. And of course they can’t be denied the right to fill out the paperwork even though they have no job, 2 car loans, and horrible credit - that’s discrimination! As long as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae approved the loan, the money was theirs!

Oh well, I’m sure the stimulus will get us out of this…. right?

Re: Economic Stimulus, Public Works, and Equal Justice: Healthy Parks, Schools, and Communities for All

Dear President Obama:

Economic stimulus and public works projects must get the nation to work building healthy, livable communities for all. Concrete and steel, and bailouts for banks, insurance companies, and automakers, are not enough. Infrastructure projects must include parks, schools, affordable housing, mass transit, safe walkable streets, public art, youth job programs, and green jobs. People of color and low income communities must receive their fair share of public investments to alleviate unfair disparities. Solutions to many urban problems – obesity, no place to play, little hope for disadvantaged youth – must be tied to vision for a new America.

Applying public health criteria to infrastructure investments could improve health and quality of life across the nation. More than 125 million children are overweight or obese, more than triple since the 1980s, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Children will have a lower life expectancy than their parents if obesity is not reversed.

New Deal projects offer lessons for parks, schools, jobs for youth, public art, and equal justice. New Deal projects included 8,000 parks and 40,000 schools. The Civilian Conservation Corps expanded open space. Part-time jobs kept high school and college students in school and out of regular markets. The difference New Deal programs made in people’s lives is incalculable.

The New Deal created work for artists, musicians, actors, and writers. Painters taught in schools, and painted murals depicting ordinary life. 15,000 musicians gave 225,000 performances in symphony orchestras, jazz groups, and free concerts in parks. Classics and contemporary works staged for 30 million viewers included productions with mixed and black casts. Writers wrote popular guides to each state, major cities, and interstate routes.

The New Deal was not a fair deal for all. Ira Katznelson’s book When Affirmative Action Was White documents how New Deal policies excluded blacks, and increased income and wealth disparities. A continuing legacy is that the average black family holds just 10% of the assets of the average white family. The Federal Housing Authority sanctioned racially restrictive housing covenants, for example.

The nation must improve equal justice today. Hispanic, black, Asian and other nonwhite residents make up half of the nation’s largest cities. Congress must strengthen Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibiting discrimination by recipients of federal funds, the President’s Order on Environmental Justice, and the right to sue to fight job discrimination.

States cannot slash spending during the worst economic crisis since the Depression, at the expense of the most vulnerable and the nation’s economic future. It makes no sense to cut state spending, and the voters have said so.

Voters in November taxed themselves and approved billions for parks and open space. Across the nation, voters approved 62 of 87 open space referendums. Congress should fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund for buying open space. In California, communities of color and low income communities have made the difference in passing resource bonds. California legislation targets urban park funds to park- and economically-poor communities. The Los Angeles River (drowned in concrete during the Depression) offers opportunities for hundreds of parks and schools, physical activity, affordable housing, and local green jobs.

Voters have approved billions more for school construction and modernization. Los Angeles alone has over $27 billion, including $7.2 billion approved last fall. Schools should be built with playing fields to provide places for physical activity to enforce physical education laws, and should be open after school and on weekends.

Parks and schools can provide physical activity to reduce obesity, improve academics, bring people together, and provide positive alternatives to gangs, crime, and violence. Joint use of schools and parks should make optimal use of land and resources. Multibenefit green spaces can clean the air and water, provide flood control, promote climate justice, and convert toxic sites and brownfields to green fields. Affordable housing is needed in underserved areas to prevent displacement of the people for whom the parks and schools are built.

The nation must address the youth crisis as part of the economic crisis. Federal summer jobs programs that worked for 30 years should be revived, and programs should keep young people in school, physically active, healthy, and out of gangs.

Public art projects should reflect diversity, democracy, and freedom. In the City of Los Angeles, only 76 of 900 official cultural and historical monuments pertain to women, people of color, or Native Americans. Studies like Five Views by the California Department of Parks and Recreation offer guidelines on diversity and its manifestations on the land. Native American sacred sites must be preserved. Judy Baca and SPARC (Social and Public Art Resource Center) with public grants and at risk youth are restoring and extending the Great Wall of Los Angeles, the longest mural in the world, depicting the region from the standpoint of diverse people.

Transportation dollars should provide transit alternatives to highways. More than 80% of gas taxes go to highways and bridges, less than 20% to transit. Transit should provide choices for people who have none, fight global warming, and reduce oil dependency. Transit to trails should provide access to parks, mountains, and beaches.

Clean renewable energy infrastructure should be built in urban communities. The energy grid should be localized (avoiding massive power plants) to be better for health and the environment, reduce fossil fuel infrastructure that sits disproportionately in communities of color, and create green jobs.

The values at stake in a comprehensive economic stimulus and public works program include providing places for fun and physical activity; promoting health and reducing obesity; youth development and improved academic performance; art, culture, and historic preservation; conservation values of clean air, water, and land, habitat protection, and climate justice; economic vitality for all; spiritual values in protecting people and the earth; and sustainable regional planning. Fundamental principles of equal justice and democratic participation cut across these other values. Systemic reform will bring hope and change.

Very truly yours,

Robert García, President and Counsel, The City Project

Prof. Judith Baca, SPARC

Robert Bracamontes, Acjachemen Tribal Member

Dr. Robert Bullard, Environmental Justice Resource Center, Clark Atlanta University

Martin Martinez, California Pan-Ethnic Health Network (CPEHN)

Irma Muñoz, Mujeres de la Tierra

Stephanie Taylor, GREEN L.A. Coalition

Download the letter to President Obama at http://www.cityprojectca.org/blog/archives/1219

Barack Obama declared ENOUGH during his campaign and that is just what we are declaring to the President Elect and all the so-called movers and shakers….ENOUGH of the poverty pimping. ENOUGH of our communities being used to finance the wealth building activities of developers, contractors, politicians and the such.

Poverty rate: 20.1 percent

Children in poverty: 29%

Number of urban neighborhoods with poverty rates of more than 40%: 22

Percentage of employees earning lass than $14 an hour: 35%

In 2006 the richest 20 percent of families earned 82 percent of the total household income in the Fresno MSA, but the poorest 20 percent of families earned on1y 1 percent.

A White male with a bachelor’s degree will earn significantly more than Black, Asians
or Hispanic males with the same educational levels, excluding master’s degrees among Blacks and
Hispanics. The Asian population, even with the same educational levels, will earn significantly less,
excluding those with master’s degrees, and outpace Whites. Hispanic males with a master’s degree earn significantly less than their White, Asian and Black counterparts.

From 1980 through 2006 in the Fresno MSA:

The average income of the poorest quintile of families increased by $5,765, from $12,010 to
$17,775, which totals 48 percent over 26 years, a 1.85 percent increase per year.

The average income of the middle quintile of families increased by $10,788, from $21,741 to
$32,529, totaling 49.62 percent over 26 years or 1.91 percent per year.

The average income of the richest quintile of families increased by $44,115, from $50,700 to
$94,815, totaling 87 percent over 26 years or 3.35 percent per year.

The average income of the richest 5 percent families increased by $57,865 from $93,000 to $150,
865, which totals 62 percent over 26 years, or 2.38 percent per year.

The average income of the richest 1 percent families increased by $283,165 from $102,327 to
$385,492, equivalent to a 276 percent increase.

if you want to discuss an economic stimulus, and while you could overlay this on top of most metro areas, Fresno remains largely ignored by state and federal officials. The poor are simply invisible. Health and human services are the first on the cutting block, while California invests in a new form of economic development: building new prisons.

Despite the ballooning deficit, this country can bail out huge industries and financial institutions driven into the ground because of greed, absences of planning and leadership, and, thanks to the Bush Administration, no oversight and no accountability. Now states that have squandered excess revenues are seeking a bailout. As non-profits, perhaps we should be grossly irresponsible, cook the books, not serve clients, and then belly up to the money bar for millions in aid.

If this is not the case, then keeping them out is wrong. If it is the case, then keeping them out makes sense.

Correlation is not causation, but it is suggestive of causation. So let’s get some real data.

So … what are the facts? Will your neighborhood be safer, less safe, or just the same, if Housing Choice Voucher holders move in?

Many workforce and antipoverty advocates prefer to cite the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ U-6 measure (sometimes called “labor market slack”) as a more comprehensive means of discussing the employment situation.

The U-6 includes:
–the official unemployment rate (that 7.2%)
–”marginally attached workers” who have looked for work sometime in the recent and indicate they’re available to work but are not currently looking for a job (this includes “discouraged workers” who give an job market reason for not currently looking for a job–like believing there are no jobs available or no jobs for which they qualify)
–workers working part-time for economic reasons (couldn’t find full-time work, reduction in hours at existing job, etc.)

As of December 2008, the U-6 is 13.5%–up almost a full percentage point from November and up from 8.7% at the December 2007 start of the recession.

It would be much better to have these children in boarding schools with good role models and teachers who cared about their education. This would give these children more opportunities and reduce the chance of them being caught in gunfire and in the long run reduce the crime in these cities.

Jaqueline Turner, President of ROBI, Inc

http://fora.tv/2008/12/04/Angela_Blackwell_on_Public_Policy_for_the_Most_Vulnerable

Drawing from the lessons of Lyndon B. Johnson, Angela Glover Blackwell argues that the best public policy is created to cater to the weakest populations.

She says that by solving problems “for the people who are the most vulnerable, we solve them for everyone.

2. The CRA lowered the amount of money a bank had to hold in reserve against a loan. This is a pretty straightforward mistake. Keeping the amount of cash that had to be held against a loan would have slowed the mortgage crisis.

3. It’s simply irrational on its face to assert that certain people were universally barred from getting a loan solely because of their race and no financial institution might have been influenced by self-interest to serve them, but that a law was required. As Michele pointed out, the FMs decision to insure CRA loans artificially decreased their riskiness. Even if a single bank was racist, we’d have to argue that most banks were operating purely from racist motives (to the detriment of their bottom line)

I wouldn’t say that the CRA was the sole cause of the mortgage crisis. The belief that sub-prime loans were actually low-risk (since people had been refinancing them rather than defaulting for years) fueled the problem immensely. But the CRA is certainly problematic. Democrats were wrong to block reforms to the CRA which certainly would have dampened (though not avoided) the current crisis.

I have just discovered this site and was elated…having had my interest in African American history and culture re-awakened by two years of Obama watching. I just wanted to say that the world is breathing a sigh of relief. LOL! Thank you for tje intelligent and brave decision so many Americans made on Novemeber 5th.

Australians were 91% in favor of Obama. I intend to visit very soon. Hope to spend some Aussie dollars in America. And I will stay in Harlem. It looks WONDERFUL from the website which linked me here.

We need to reverse the paradigm: the economy should be a servant of the people, not the other way around. We should work to live, but not live to work. Finally, politics should not be a hobby or pass-time, reserved for those who find it interesting. Rather it should be a daily habit like brushing one’s teeth or cooking. Barack can’t make change - he can only make it easier for us to do so. And he needs to hear from us about what is and is not working at the community level. As more of our institutions of social reproduction (schools, churches, workplaces, etc.) become more democratized, democracy in the broader political arena is strengthened. A democratic inclination must become one of our “habits of mind,” an element of our social intelligence.

Integrate - principles to one another and across all disciplines of work. As in the adage about the “headbone is connected to the neckbone, etc.” success of the PolicyLink principles must not only link the principles across civic engagement, economies for distressed communities, affordable housing and healthy communities, but also in relationship to education, finances, cultural and recreational resources, and connection to the global community that impacts daily life at home.

Love - like you would want someone driven by if you were to receive their help.