Of course, there is nothing intrinsically special about the cost of health care – for the company, it’s just another labor expense, albeit a fat and growing one. If Wal-Mart is the model – the leader of the pack – then “the industry’s goal” is to bring all labor costs “more in line” with the viciously anti-union trendsetter. The larger objective is to break the union, as an organization or in spirit. From the current corporate perspective, level playing fields can only exist when the employees are flat on their backs. Executives from purportedly competing companies conspire and collude toward that end, all the while pleading that “The Devil (Wal-Mart) made me do it.”

I and several of my friends are boycotting Wal-Mart because of its employment practices, its complete and total disregard for US labor laws, its ultra-capitalist mindset, and its refusal to coexist with other businesses in the community.  I simply can't contribute to such an abuse of power and would hate to one day have Wal-Mart as my only option for everything from sporting goods to groceries.  This Walmartization of America – and Bush – must be stopped!!

Having spent tens of millions of dollars to convince the public that school vouchers is an authentic “Black” issue, the wealthy financiers of the “movement” now seek support from white suburbanites, whose kids already attend the best schools. To move this bloc of voters, E-3 and its rich benefactors are preparing a campaign of fear: If voucher programs are not soon established in the inner cities, the line goes, minority students will spill into the suburbs, while taxes soar to pay the growing costs of urban education. Vouchers are the brainchild of the Hard Right, accomplished fear-mongers who specialize in racial manipulation. It was only a matter of time before they returned to their accustomed themes.

Congratulations to for exposing yet another element of the E3 voucher agenda in New Jersey. If E3 is to gain any traction, it’s going to need all the “public support” it can muster.  Right now, vouchers are “no sale” in suburban districts, so inciting the fear of a minority influx under the Bush administration’s so-called “No Child Left Behind” act is just what the doctor ordered.

In fact, E3 will do anything to mislead the media and the public about the level of “support” vouchers enjoy, as long as the impression of a “movement” is sustained.  The truth has never stood in their way.

On two occasions – November 2001 and again in April 2003 – E3 purchased a question on an Eagleton Institute/Rutgers University poll, and on both occasions, claimed more than 60 percent of New Jerseyans support school vouchers. A well-read observer might ask: How could that be true, when voters in every other state overwhelmingly oppose vouchers?

The answer was in the wording of the question: “Would you vote for or against a system of giving parents the option of using government-funded school vouchers to pay for tuition at the public, private or religious school of their choice?”  In November, 2001, I immediately contacted the Eagleton Institute pollster who conducted the survey. He admitted that the question, as worded, did not measure whether New Jerseyans support spending public tax dollars on private and religious schools – the essence of a publicly funded voucher program.

The problem is the inclusion of the word “public,” since there is never likely to be a voucher program in New Jersey – or anywhere else – that allows all students to simply enroll in any public school system in the state.  Of course, that’s not what E3 is telling urban parents – and suburban voters.  It’s more than willing to play the race card when it suits their purpose.

E3 is engaging in what is called “push-polling” – using a poll question to drive up support (false support, in this instance) for its position.

That enables E3 to claim that “two-thirds of New Jerseyans support vouchers,” despite the fact that it’s simply not true.  Here’s a suggestion for E3: In your next poll, tell people that by voting for vouchers, they’ll also get free groceries and a new car.  That ought to get support up near the 90 percent level.

If the Bush administration were really interested in improving public education it could start with requiring that all states that receive federal funds for education:

• must have a state system for funding public education that is equitable, does not rely on real estate taxes, and sets a minimum spending level that reflects the cost of educating each child in the state to meet student learning goals.  Revenues would be collected and distributed by the state to assure that more revenue rich districts did not receive more than their share.
• must show that all teachers in all classrooms meet the minimum requirements for licensure within the state or hold a bachelors degree in an appropriate subject and be under the direct supervision of a fully qualified mentor teacher.  Until schools can meet this standard, there is no hope for them reaching the NCLB standards.
• must develop a paradigm for educators that provides a career ladder from the receipt of one’s high school diploma or its equivalent through becoming a district CEO.  This paradigm should allow for training paths that require the combination of work experience, classroom training, and internship to progress from one professional level to the next.  The paradigm must form an integrated link between the teacher training classroom and the public school classroom.  No educator should be able to move from one level to the next without demonstration of competence in situ. 

This new paradigm is essential to meet the recruiting realities of the near future and to assure that members of communities that have not traditionally produced educators for their children can do so.

I live in Massachusetts.  We have something called Educational Reform on which we have spent millions and have little except a growing drop out rate to show for it.  I am an administrator at a state college.  In the Fall of 2003 the first class of students who had to pass a series of standardized tests reached us.  This class of “tested performers” had the same percentage of students who tested at the developmental levels in writing and math as we had for a decade before.  So what did teaching to the test and mandatory test get us?  Bigger classes at the community college and hundreds of minority students who will never, despite 12 years of classes, graduate from high school. 

Let’s spend our dollars on the teachers and the students and forget about the tests.

It is no longer possible to view commercial news media as mere servants of the ruling rich – they are full members of the presiding corporate pantheon. General media consolidation has created an integrated mass communications system that is both objectively and self-consciously at one with the Citibanks and ExxonMobils of the world. Media companies act in effective unison on matters of importance to the larger corporate class. For all politically useful purposes, the monopolization of US media is now complete, in that the corporate owners and managers of the dominant organs are interchangeable and indistinguishable, sharing a common mission and worldview….

There is no question that Blacks and progressives must establish alternative media outlets, and not just on the Internet. However, there is no substitute for confronting the corporate media head-on, through direct mass action and other, creative tactics. The rich men’s voices must be de-legitimized in the eyes of the people, who already suspect that they are being systematically lied to and manipulated.

It's been 18 years since I earned my degree in journalism and history from the University of Oregon. I've just read your commentary on the destructive power of the corporate media, and I just want you to know that I was aware of what I was going into from my first week in J-School.

Professor Duncan MacDonald (don't know where he is now) told his class in Mass Media in Society: "You young (I was 35, markedly older than most of the class, and had served in Vietnam in 1969-1970) would-be journalists probably think that your first imperative as reporters will be to satisfy some perceived people's need or right to know. You are wrong. Your first imperative will be to make the publisher a buck."

I went ahead and finished my curriculum in journalism anyway, and have been published sporadically in small outlets since then. But I have no illusions that there is any real place for the stringer, the free-lancer, the independent investigator in the profession, though we may occasionally be found in print.

The economic concentration within the media industry has (as Professor MacDonald told us it would back in 1984, and as you said in this fine overview I have just finished reading) become complete. Ted Koppel isn't just a top-level gatekeeper, he now is a partner in the ownership of the gate!

Bob Dylan wrote the line, "money doesn't talk, it swears"; I don't have any idea how to confront that many billions of dollars worth of aggregate media power, which is no longer worthy of being called "The Fourth Estate", but is totally at one with the corporate structure of interlocking directorates. There is no use for an antitrust division within the Department of Justice any more, because globalist corporatism – and specifically globalist media corporatism – has transcended all the old definitions of monopoly to which Clayton and Sherman had relevance.

We are like the first mammals, under the feet of the dinosaurs of the Cretaceous epoch. Like those little ones, may we survive.

Excellent, excellent job on, “The Awesome Destructive Power of the CPM.”  This is by far the clearest, most literally effective synopsis I’ve seen regarding the unprecedented power of the corporate media and it’s consequences to democracy.  You hit on it with force from every angle.

Most criticisms of today’s media are overwrought in technical jargon and simply fail to speak to the urgency of the situation, partly due, I think, to the fact that most mainstream journalists – left and right – are wrapped up in the spectacle and allure of television and don’t know how to separate themselves from TV’s effect.  It is an addiction of monumental proportions. 

You are definitely getting somewhere with your distillation of the facts.  What you speak out about is at the leading edge of activism relative to an enormously serious problem we face. 

The last two paragraphs of the piece are beautifully written:

 “No society in human history has confronted an enemy as omnipresent as the US corporate media. Yet there is no choice but to challenge their hegemony.

The world can be changed, but only by changing the way others see their world.”

Indeed.  I ask, how do we challenge?

The publishers of are media veterans, and know from intimate experience that mass broadcasting and print are the weakest links in the chains of power. Their product is public credibility, a fragile quantity. Relatively small numbers of determined activists can snatch it from them. They are uniquely defenseless against demonstrations, inherently so. We have seen managers cower at the mere thought of being visited by angry activists – not because of possible threats to their FCC licenses (although this was once a consideration), but in fear of being exposed as just another business on the make.

Mr. Ford opined that he isn’t “a fan” of Black History Month because he looks forward to the day when it will no longer need to be celebrated. It is unclear what utopian age in the future would make it unnecessary to remember American history. Even if our ancestors’ dreams are realized and we reach the nirvanas of equality and justice we will still need to ponder the past….

The Congressman has achieved quite a lot at the age of 34 but he wants to be a United States Senator. His calculations have told him that the Sons of Confederate Veterans are not to be trifled with, but the Sons of Fort Pillow can be easily disregarded.

Ms. Kimberley, thank you for a very insightful look at Harold Ford Jr. And you should know that there are those of us who were born and raised in the City of Memphis who feel as though this man has no right at all being a representative for our city. After all, he only won the seat after his father relinquished it, and many of us are very upset that he never even lived in the city growing up. How can he justifiably speak on behalf of Tennesseans – no one who grew up there even knows him! For him to bask in the limelight at every opportunity as "the Congressman from Tennessee" bothers me every time I see him! Thanks again for your article. Please expose him as a fraud whenever you have the opportunity.

I read your Freedom Rider piece and thought to myself "Someone just broke out their can of whoop ass" on the Tennessee Congressman, LOL (pardon the slang, but I think you get my point).

I saw him on Charlie Rose show right after the initial primaries and when he was introduced, the first thing that came out of his mouth was "First of all, I'd like to say that I'm a PROUD Democrat."  I was thinking, "Why did he feel a need to say that?  Are those articles in publications like getting to him?"  And lo, and behold, here comes your article, which spoke the truth to power on a whole 'nother level.

On the other hand, I'm a softie and I feel sorry for him, trying to weave between two worlds (trying to act like a Democrat while thinking like a Republican) and not seeming to accomplish very much, 'cause he doesn't want to offend anybody. 

The varied commentaries on the tragedy unfolding in Haiti are right on the money.  It is a rebellion with White America written all over it.   Bear in mind that the color of the American predatory imperium is manifestly white, in stark contrast to its reluctant subjects.  Besides, to our knowledge, Americans of color have not been handed governments of their choice to overthrow.  The U.S. has made no secret of its scorn towards Aristide and his leftist ways and it was only a matter of time before racist machinations would rear their ugly head.  We are still smarting from the dizzying array of lies intended to justify a racist criminal war against defenseless Iraqis.  The world is now being persuaded that the more than 15,000 innocent Iraqi civilians murdered (5 times more than the just as innocent victims of 9/11 terror) is a price to be paid for an unsolicited "democracy" whose worth is comprehensible only to a White American elite. 

So, is it surprising that an elected leader in Haiti is being ousted by a band of thugs subsidized by the Americans with a little help from the Dominican Republic, (now a fully certified satellite state) cheerfully doing its master's bidding? So what else is new?  Stand by for more action-packed drama coming soon to a theater near you: Venezuela and a cast of millions – another target for racist "democracy."  Interesting that countries with popularly elected leaders should require a further dose of prescribed "democracy."  Where there is no oil and risk to (white) American lives is minimal, a few dollars handed out to obliging gangsters, and you are assured of "democracy" promptly delivered to your doorstep.  You must hand it to the White foot soldiers of the imperium: their seemingly infinite creativity in fomenting death and mayhem among people of color is truly astonishing.  Yet more astonishing is our inability to learn to identify the donkey.  Only then can his tail be well and truly nailed.

I am a careful observer of the turmoil in Haiti. What is happening today is a result of the direct and indirect involvement of the US government in Haiti. Georges Bush, father and son, have always hated Aristide and it is clear why. And what is the bizarre coincidence that under both Bush regimes Aristide got hit by his violent foes? The rebels are trained by who? Who had provided these great uniforms, arms and ammunition – way better that what the previous army had got? When Guy Philippe said that his troops are waiting for orders, where did that order is coming from?

While Haiti burns, Uganda is awash in the blood of the slaughtered, southern Africa starves, the inner cities of America are fast deteriorating, and our Black institutions are in crisis (colleges and university, newspapers, church, etc), African Americans hold yet another eight-hour talk-fest on the State of Black America.  With all due respects to Tavis Smiley, Tom Joyner and the distinguished panelists, I am really exhausted by the annual talk-fest on the state of Black America that doesn't translate into a national movement to galvanize Black America.

With the advancement in technology, why aren't we organizing, galvanizing, and motivating the African American constituency in ways that Moveon.org, e-activist.org, commoncause.org and other progressive groups are organizing and mobilizing their groups?

We are 35 million strong; we have more elected officials and persons in policy-making positions than ever before; and we have more Blacks who have moved into the middle class (however tenuous that hold may be) than ever before.  Yet, these numbers have not appreciably bettered the conditions of Blacks in Black America nor have they impacted policies toward Africa and other Black nations.  In fact, George W. Bush refused to meet with the Congressional Black Caucus for three years!

We are 35 million strong!  All it takes is one dollar from each of us annually sent to a national organization that would dispense it to our HBCU's who are in trouble; to pay for our own lobbyists; to assist Black nations like Haiti; to control our destiny so that we are a force to be reckoned with!

I am neither an intellectual nor the most articulate of persons.  Like the late Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, I am just sick and tired of being sick and tired about the condition of Black folks in the world.  Randall Robinson has left the United States, and I think Black America and America are all the less by his absence.  I don't have the luxury or the desire to leave America.  I choose to make my stand here. 

Your articles are supreme. We in Diaspora need clear minds like yours. I wish you all the best.

Thank you for being there. I am a black Zimbabwean professional in the Diaspora. I thoroughly enjoyed your interview with Morgan Tsvangirai and it made my day. Subsequently I e-mailed the article to several pals of mine. Thank you

I just want to say thank you for writing as you do. Your articles are so poignant and informative they bring joy to my heart and tears to my eyes. Yours is a “voice” that should be heard by all Black people. We need you to keep on keepin’ on. May Almighty continue to bless with the gift that you use so well.

Aboru, aboye, abosise. Ache.

March 4 2004
Issue 80

is published every Thursday.