The Value of Slavery in the South During the Confederacy

"Confederacy Month", I thought it was Slavery Celebration Month."

It’s a good thing I was at home when I read this sentence, because I would have scared the shit out of the coffee shop crowd when I hollered out. Between that and the woman last night on Twitter who kept insisting to me that Obama has “failed”, even as the man on my TV recounted the number of nuclear non-proliferation deals the president got done this week, I am convinced that these Tea Baggers and militia men and and Governors Bob McConnell and Haley Barbour have fallen down a rabbit hole, and are now watching real life from behind a glass enclosure, where a mixture of laughing gas and goofer dust is being pumped into the air they breathe.

The headline I saw a couple of days ago over at Talking Points Memo read “VA Gov McDonnell Institutes Writing Test For Felons Seeking Voting Rights.” It won’t take USA TODAY 24 hours to come up with a color coded chart that shows in graphic detail how many of these felons are minorities. Bob McConnell is obviously trying to get his “Cracker Cred” up to snuff. Or maybe the dumb ass political consultant with the slicked back hair, the one the Virginia state GOP is paying waay, waay too much for this kind of advice, is smoking rufeys for breakfast before he jumps on the strategy conference call. But even if he were, BOB - cause you don’t deserve to be called “Governor” of shit right now – wouldn’t you realize, when someone threw this out there as an idea, that it is politically tone deaf? Do you think you only serve the people who voted for you, and not your entire state?

For those of you who have no idea what the Civil War was all about:
By 1860 there were approximately 4,000,000 slaves in the United States, the second largest slave society--slave population--in the world. The only one larger was Russian serfdom. Brazil was close. But in 1860 American slaves, as a financial asset, were worth approximately three and a half billion dollars--that's just as property. Three and a half billion dollars was the net worth, roughly, of slaves in 1860. In today's dollars that would be approximately seventy-five billion dollars. In 1860 slaves as an asset were worth more than all of America's manufacturing, all of the railroads, all of the productive capacity of the United States put together. Slaves were the single largest, by far, financial asset of property in the entire American economy. The only thing worth more than the slaves in the American economy of the 1850s was the land itself, and no one can really put a dollar value on all of the land of North America.

It was about the money - the same thing it's about now. But I bet you won't see this kind of stuff in your kid's history books. Not so long as Americans who long for the inequities of yesteryear insist on teaching "2+2=5", so that the bullshit they are trying to pass off as "authentic history" will pass the smell test.

As I used to tell my buddy years ago, when he asked why so many Southern whites were still mad about the confederacy, "Can you imagine waking up one morning to see all your money walking around free? Black people waving at you from across the street, telling you that you've got to PAY now for the labor you used to get for providing a few meals and a rickety roof to lay their heads under?"

This is really, in the grand scheme of things, irrelevant - black people are here to stay. And most of us - let me repeat that - THE MAJORITY OF US - are doing the right thing 24/7/365.

So if I were you, BOB, I'd take my pseudo-Nazi Confederate paraphernalia and pile it up with all the others who continue to insist on paying homage to the most treasonous act in the history of the United States, soak that shit in a few thousand gallons of gas, and burn every goddamn remnant until there's nothing left but a pile of ashes.

Robert E. Lee is not coming back, the Calvary will not ride again, and your great-great grandmother was, is, and will always be wrong about "the South will rise again", so long as you and Haley Barbour's Boss Hogg ass are the best you have to offer.

This is "America Has A Black President" month.

The next celebration will begin May 1st. The one after that will be June 1st. The one after that...

...I think you get the picture.

Is that "Hail To The Chief" I here

Good Morning. China is on there way to being the number one technological leader and economic power of the world. We as a country have to continue to invest more in our future. By the Chinese govenment estimation, by 2030 they without a doubt will be Numero Uno.
My name is Michael. I am also a middle aged black man. I am a newly highly qualified blology teacher at the high school level. This is my second year in the in Dade County school system. Every year at the beginning of the academic year we have a faculty meeting to go over the school's and the student's last years performances. Black children are at the bottom of the learning curve, not because of any learning deficiency but beacusse of the lack of trust of their teachers and the lack know how. My continued support to them is greatly needed as a teacher and others like me who help to increase the graduation rate of all students. Engineering graduates should be a topic concern and focus of our education system. Please help me help them.

Thank You,
Michael S.

Jim Crow Law is Back and Kicking in Virginia

Virginia is one of only two states remaining (Kentucky is the other) that deny the right to vote for life to everyone with a criminal conviction, unless the individual applies for, and is granted, clemency from the governor. Virginia would also be the only state in 2010 to require a written essay.

The roots of Virginia's criminal disenfranchisement law are firmly planted in Jim Crow. During the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1901-02, delegate Carter Glass (later a prominent U.S. Senator) described the criminal disenfranchisement provision as part of a plan to "eliminate the darkey as a political factor in this state in less than 5 years, so that in no single county...will there be the least concern felt for the complete supremacy of the white race in the affairs of government."

The law certainly has had its intended effect. More than 300,000 people have lost the right to vote for life in Virginia. One in five African-Americans, and one in four African-American men, is permanently disenfranchised in the Commonwealth. African Americans make up one fifth of Virginia's population, but over half of those denied the right to vote are African-American.

The application to get one's right to vote back has always been onerous in Virginia, and the number of people "approved" each year is tiny. Former Governor Tim Kaine approved the most applications in history, a whopping total that amounted to less than 2 percent of the disenfranchised population.

But McDonnell's newest requirement is not just another box to check in a bureaucratic process. It introduces an entirely arbitrary and subjective standard that allows the most powerful elected official in the state to play fast and loose with one of America's most fundamental rights. This essay exam is no different than the arbitrary, unpassable tests that politicians and government officials employed for decades after Reconstruction to keep African-Americans from voting. And it is no different than the notorious literacy tests employed during the same period. If you can't read, you can't write. All of these nefarious tricks were outlawed by Congress with the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Another piece of federal legislation, the Democracy Restoration Act, is now pending before Congress. That bill would restore the right to vote in federal elections to every American citizen who is out of prison, living in the community.
( Erika Wood 8:54 AM on 04/15/2010 http://www.thegrio.com/opinion/jim-crow-makes-a-comeback-in-virginia.php)

Nothing Comes to a Lazy Person But Poverty

Money to some people is everything. You have to have a nice house or nice clothes and a brand new Lexus to be happy. To me being wealthy is alot better than being rich. In order to be wealthy, to have a successful career you have got to have a job. In order to make something of yourself you have to work hard. My grandfather tells me all the time, to start at the bottom to get to the top. That means you got to start off by working hard days and long nights. So if whenever you get older you can retire and live life right. If you choose to not worrk hard, go to work when ever you want and do whatever then you are looking at poverty. Wouldn't you like to drive the car you want, live where ever you want and have fun right? For people in poverty, because of their income they can't live where ever they want. Money can make your life easier rather than difficult. All it takes is just hard work and some self determination. Don't be lazy this is the one life kind of deal. So that's why I am going to do everything I can become wealthy no matter what it takes. Just because people tell you that can't accomplish something doesn't mean you can't. It's up to you if you really want to do it.

Written by Vince Guillard of Tift County High School who is 12th grade senior.

What's Next in the Techno Evolutionary Chain (video)

Technology replication TEMES vs MEMES (video)

Shocking New Report; 321 Killed in Massacre

Dressed in military uniforms, rebels hacked villagers to death.

At least 321 Congolese villagers were hacked to death by fighters from the Lord's Resistance Army in December, the BBC reports. It's the worst massacre ever perpetrated by the rebel group, which says it is fighting to create a Christian theocracy in Uganda, but has spread its murderous rampage to Sudan, Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Witnesses say the rebels, dressed in military uniforms and pretending to be Congolese soldiers, asked people in remote villages to carry food for them across a river and killed them with machetes if they refused. "As we marched, the LRA killed people—two at one village, three at the next, and then four at the next," a witness who escaped told the BBC. "They wanted to kill me, but the leader said I should be kept alive, as they needed strong soldiers." At least 80 children were kidnapped, the boys to be fighters and the girls to be sex slaves.
Nearly every cellphone—not to mention MP3 players, laptops, and videogame systems—contains minerals that were mined in the Congo. Known as the 3Ts, tin, tantalum, and tungsten are the main source of income for military groups and demand for them continues to fuel regional conflict.
Congress is working on legislation that would require companies to be transparent about where they obtain the 3Ts, but the electronics industry has spent $2 million to weaken the proposed rules. Those companies say their supply chains are too complex to make sure the materials are conflict-free, but the Enough Project says there are a mere six major steps in the chain from the mines to a cellphone in a customer's pocket.
The question is can we stop buying electronic devices, at least long enough to show the electronic industry that we care about ours and stop contributing to the murdering our people indirectly by the purchase of these products. I am not surprised if other folks don’t care about our people but we should give a big DAMN about ours…

The Neurons That Shaped Civilization (video)

There is scientific proof that we are gods with a small "g". It proves that "The Lord" did create us in his likeness not in his image. Neuro anatomy science has through research proven that we are connected through energy and the body encompasses for a time the electronic energy that we are at are essence. The vastness of our being "our soul" is interconnected with all other souls of this universe. Science has also proven the "Law of Thermodynamics" as next next part of the proof.

“The 2011 Million Man March”

Economic and Social Woes of Black Folk
Million Man March of 1995
One of the primary motivating factors for the march was to place black issues back on the nation’s political agenda. In the aftermath of the Republican Party’s victory in the 1994 Congressional election and the continued success of the party’s campaign platform, the Contract with America, some African American leaders felt the social and economic issues facing the black community fell by the wayside of policy debates. March organizers believed that politicians were failing the black community by “papering over the most vital dimensions of the crisis in international capitalism” and blaming urban Blacks for “domestic economic woes that threatened to produce record deficits, massive unemployment, and uncontrolled inflation.”
At the time of the march, African Americans faced unemployment rates nearly twice that of white Americans, a poverty rate of more than 40%, and a median family income that was about 58% of the median for white households. More than 11% of all black males were unemployed and for those aged 16 to 19, the number of unemployed had climbed to over 50%[8] Further, according to Reverend Jesse Jackson’s speech at the March, the United States House of Representatives had reduced funding to some of the programs that played an integral role in urban Americans’ lives. “The House of Representatives cut $1.1 billion from the nation’s poorest public schools,” and “cut $137 million from Head Start” effectively subtracting $5,000 from each classroom’s budget and cutting 45,000 preschoolers from a crucial early education program.
Media portrayal of the march.
In addition to their goal of fostering a spirit of support and self-sufficiency within the black community, organizers of the Million Man March also sought to use the event as a publicity campaign aimed at combating what they perceived as the negative racial stereotypes in the American media and in popular culture. March organizers were dismayed by the sweeping stereotypes they thought white America seemed to draw from the coverage of such figures as Willie Horton, O. J. Simpson, and Mike Tyson. Believing that “black men have been designated by the culture as the sacrificial lambs for male evil”, event organizers asked black male attendees to make a public display of their commitment to responsible and constructive behavior that would give the mass media positive imagery to broadcast. Now in 2010 ; Why is President Obama doing something for everyone else but us. Gays, Mexicans, and Jewish folk, what about his folk?
We need another March on Washington “soon and very soon” as the old gospel song says to get President Obama to start doing more for black folk? President Roosevelt told A. Phillip Randolf that if he wanted something more for black people to make the president do something. Because the president wanted to do something but the powers that made him president would not allow him to do something unless there seemed to be some political strife in the horizon. Note to self: the squeaky wheel gets the oil. Black people let us organize and get started marching to the Washington plaza. We are a country of 41 million black folks with a economy of 893 billion dollars, but for simplicity sake we’ll round it off to 1 trillion dollars. That is comparable to Spain, Argentina, Portugal, we have clout ya’ll lets use it.

How to Convert an Entire Country to Electric Cars (video)