After five years of invitations, President Bush gave his first speech to the NAACP during his presidency. In the midst of his pandering and condescencion, Bush attempted to garner support for permanently repealing the estate (i.e. death) tax, which forces wealthy people to pay taxes on the property that they bequeath. Currently, the estate tax gets smaller and smaller until 2010, when it disappears for one year. The tax, Bush’s first as president, reappears in 2011.

Many commentators have rightly pointed out the absurdity of Bush’s reference to his “friend,” BET founder Bob Johnson, as a means of justifying the tax’s value for Black people. During the speech, Bush said:

“He’s an interesting man. He believes strongly in ownership. He has been a successful owner. He believes strongly, for example, that the death tax will prevent future African-American entrepreneurs from being able to pass their assets from one generation to the next.”

As economist John Irons notes, out of 38 million Black people in America, only 59 will pay the estate tax this year. That number will drop to 33 by the year 2009. Perhaps, instead of talking about an issue that effects fewer than 200 Black people this decade, Bush should have talked about the near 25 percent of Black American who currently live below the poverty line.

Still, although it doesn’t directly affect most Black people, the death tax is still a critical issue for all Americans. The most recently proposed estate tax cuts would cost 760 billion dollars during their first full decade. The government would have to borrow 600 billion dollars in order to make up for the cuts, which would primarly benefit the heirs of America’s wealthiest families. The remaining 160 billion dollars would be covered through moves like increasing payroll taxes. Such a move, ironically, would create economic burden for the 99 percent of Americans who dont benefit from the death tax.

Although it is easy to dismiss the death tax debate as a non-issue, given the infinitesimal number of wealthy (not rich!) Black Americans, the opposite is actually true. Estate tax repeals don’t just make the rich richer. Poor people also become considerably more burdened economically. Since Black Americans are disproportionately poor, this issue needs to be at the front and center of any conversations about Black prosperity.

A while back, Mexican president Vicente Fox planned to repeal his country’s US-based drug laws. President Bush immediately stepped in, citing the potential effects of such legislation on American crime. According to Norm Stamper, the legalization of drugs would have a positive effect on the United States and its neighboring countries.

How Legalizing Drugs Will End Violence
By Norm Stamper

…Last June in Nuevo Laredo, across the border from Laredo, Texas, Alejandro Dominguez was sworn in as the city’s police chief. That same day, three dark Chevy Suburbans with tinted windows pulled up to his office. Moments later, Dominguez, a reluctant top cop who only took the job at the pleading of a terrified citizenry, was dead. Police recovered 35 to 40 casings from an AR-15 assault rifle.

Mexico’s drug dealers, including the Zetas (elite military commandos assigned to fight drugs but who’ve gone over to the other side), are among the most organized, proficient and prolific killers in history.

The violence does not end with the capture or the killing of major players like the Arellano brothers. (Ramon was shot and killed by the federales in February of 2002; Benjamín was captured a month later. Francisco has been in prison for years.) As with the illicit drug scene in the United States, thousands of low-level drug-dealing wannabes are marking time — waiting for today’s kingpin to fall so they can move up.

And the violence grows, and grows.

Virtually every analysis of the Mexican “drug problem” points to the themes raised here: the inducements of big money and wide fame; the crushing poverty of those exploited by drug dealers; the entrepreneurial frenzy of expanding and protecting one’s markets; the large, unquenchable American demand for drugs; and the complicity of many in law enforcement.

But something’s missing from the analysis: the role of prohibition.

Illegal drugs are expensive precisely because they are illegal. The products themselves are worthless weeds — cannabis (marijuana), poppies (heroin), coca (cocaine) — or dirt-cheap pharmaceuticals and “precursors” used, for example, in the manufacture of methamphetamine. Yet today, marijuana is worth as much as gold, heroin more than uranium, cocaine somewhere in between. It is the U.S.’s prohibition of these drugs that has spawned an ever-expanding international industry of torture, murder and corruption. In other words, we are the source of Mexico’s “drug problem.”

The remedy is as obvious as it is urgent: legalization.

Regulated legalization of all drugs — with stiffened penalties for driving impaired or furnishing to kids — would bring an immediate halt to the violence. How? By (1) dramatically reducing the cost of these drugs, (2) shifting massive enforcement resources to prevention and treatment and (3) driving drug dealers out of business: no product, no profit, no incentive. In an ideal world, Mexico and the United States would move to repeal prohibition simultaneously (along with Canada). But even if we moved unilaterally, sweeping and lasting improvements to public safety (and public health) would be felt on both sides of the border. (Tragically and predictably, just as Mexico’s parliament was about to reform its U.S.-modeled drug laws, the Bush administration stepped in, pressuring President Vicente Fox to abandon the enlightened position he’d championed for two years.)
For the entire story, click here.

As promised, I’ve uploaded the footage of my appearance on the Lynn Doyle show. The one hour show dealt with the Stop Snitching Movement and featured a few interesting moments.

To view the show, click here.

Love is on the way, all I got to say is it wont let go
We can pray to early May, fast for 30 days, still it wont let go
Got a good book and got all in it tried a little yoga for a minute, but it wont let go
Tried to turn the sauna up hotter, drank a whole jar of holy water, but it wont let go

Erykah Badu “I Want You”

Yesterday, Chicago’s City Coucil approved an ordinace that will require big-box retailers to pay a living wage. The measure requires mega-retailers with more than $1 billion in annual sales and stores of at least 90,000 square feet to pay workers at least $10 an hour in wages plus $3 in fringe benefits by mid-2010. The current minimum wage in Illinois is $6.50 an hour and the federal minimum is $5.15. Following in the footsteps of Sante Fe, Albequerque, San Francisco, and Washington, the decision makes Chicago the largest city in the nation to require living wages from large companies.

Of course, the Council’s decision was met with considerable opposition from Mayor Richard Daly and Wal-Mart (surprise!), one of the city’s biggest companies. By increasing wages, they argue, companies will have little incentive to stay in the city, thereby driving out companies, job opportunities, and possibilities for development within the city’s poorest sections. In fact, Walmart has already gone on record saying that it will strongly consider relocating to the suburbs if the they are forced to increase wages. Insiders say that Target, the city’s other major retailer, will not be far behind.

Given this reality, the question becomes: What good is a high minimum wage if there are no jobs?

This isn’t to suggest that we concede to the exploitative labor practices of major companies. On the contrary, we must work more diligently to anticipate the remarkably creative ways that companies resist and circumvent policy initiaives that privilege workers. In this instance, we must strongly advocate an increase in the Federal minimum wage –there hasn’t been one in nearly 10 years– so that companies like Wal-Mart and Target can’t hold local economies hostage when they demand basic human rights.