The Cherokee Nation, that rump group of Native Americans who are more proud of their White heritage than their Black heritage, voted to expel Blacks from the nation. That means they have to share $$$$ coming to the tribe via US government and gaming enterprises, with fewer people.
Among the many who have spoken up about this is the Congressional Black Caucus, which, according to the Associated Press, is asking the federal government “to weigh in on the legality of a vote by the Cherokee Nation earlier this month to revoke citizenship from descendants of former tribal slaves."
This from the AP: "Saying they were 'shocked and outraged,' more than two dozen members of the Congressional Black Caucus signed a letter to the Interior Department's Bureau of Indian Affairs questioning the 'validity, legality, as well as the morality' of the March 3 vote.
"'The black descendant Cherokees can trace their Native American heritage back in many cases for more than a century,' said Rep. Diane Watson (D-Calif.). 'They are legally a part of the Cherokee Nation through history, precedent, blood and treaty obligations.'”
Read what Mike Shelton, a member of the state legislature in Oklahama, says about how the Cherokee Nation is marching on the wrong trail: http://www.muskogeephoenix.com/opinion/local_story_070192128.html
Showing posts with label Congress. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Congress. Show all posts
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Caught Between Heat and a Cold Place
Granted, hundreds of thousands of US citizens are now pawns in a geopolitical competition between the US and Venezuela, as the latter's president does all he can to castigate and embarrass the Bush Administration.
It’s too easy to berate Joe Kennedy – mainly for his name than his actions – than to DO SOMETHING. If the US provided ways and means for the less fortunate among US to afford heating oil to stay warm this winter, Americans wouldn’t need to call 1-877-Joe-4-OIL.
“I’m Joe Kennedy. Help is on the way,” he assures in his ubiquitous television commercials. What galls people who themselves are benefiting from fuel from questionable places – including Venezuela, which sends oil to Kennedy’s nonprofit Citizens Energy Corporation at a discount -- is that Kennedy gives credit to “our friends in Venezuela.” That country’s president, Hugo Chavez, is clearly no friend of President Bush, whom he has denounced at the United Nations as an incarnation of “the devil.”
Having unsuccessfully sought commitments from the major US oil companies and from oil-rich countries in the Middle East, this is what Kennedy has said about going with Venezuela and Citgo, which is a Venezuelan-owned company:
"Every single company said no. Every single one except one, and that was Citgo. So it is important that when a major company reaches out and does something like this, that we should acknowledge and celebrate the kind of action they are taking.
"Exxon made $10 billion in a quarter - in three months out of the year they made $10 billion. And they say, when it comes to helping the poor, 'Sorry, there is no money in the till'."
A Florida congressman whose tush is well-warmed has taken Kennedy to task, practically accusing him of being unpatriotic. To work with Chavez is to deal with a real devil, but if 400,000 American households are warm this winter…….???
As Kennedy says at the end of his ads: “No one should be left out in the cold.” Clearly the US government and its good friends don't give a heck while ignoring the fact that so much of corporate America – from Vice President Cheney’s good friends at Haliburton to airlines – is racking up billions in profits by doing business with Venezuela.
It’s too easy to berate Joe Kennedy – mainly for his name than his actions – than to DO SOMETHING. If the US provided ways and means for the less fortunate among US to afford heating oil to stay warm this winter, Americans wouldn’t need to call 1-877-Joe-4-OIL.
“I’m Joe Kennedy. Help is on the way,” he assures in his ubiquitous television commercials. What galls people who themselves are benefiting from fuel from questionable places – including Venezuela, which sends oil to Kennedy’s nonprofit Citizens Energy Corporation at a discount -- is that Kennedy gives credit to “our friends in Venezuela.” That country’s president, Hugo Chavez, is clearly no friend of President Bush, whom he has denounced at the United Nations as an incarnation of “the devil.”
Having unsuccessfully sought commitments from the major US oil companies and from oil-rich countries in the Middle East, this is what Kennedy has said about going with Venezuela and Citgo, which is a Venezuelan-owned company:
"Every single company said no. Every single one except one, and that was Citgo. So it is important that when a major company reaches out and does something like this, that we should acknowledge and celebrate the kind of action they are taking.
"Exxon made $10 billion in a quarter - in three months out of the year they made $10 billion. And they say, when it comes to helping the poor, 'Sorry, there is no money in the till'."
A Florida congressman whose tush is well-warmed has taken Kennedy to task, practically accusing him of being unpatriotic. To work with Chavez is to deal with a real devil, but if 400,000 American households are warm this winter…….???
As Kennedy says at the end of his ads: “No one should be left out in the cold.” Clearly the US government and its good friends don't give a heck while ignoring the fact that so much of corporate America – from Vice President Cheney’s good friends at Haliburton to airlines – is racking up billions in profits by doing business with Venezuela.
Thursday, January 18, 2007
First Black President? Hah!
In fiction and in fact, we have already had several. I'll start with the fiction because if you don't already know this, you're perhaps not ready for the "facts."
"The most famous Black President of this century is one Douglass Dilman: he is the hero of The Man, a 1964 best-selling novel by Irving Wallace, which was later made into a movie starring James Earl Jones. Thrust into the Oval Office after a crisis of succession, President Dilman swiftly finds himself the target of popular animosity and Beltway intrigue," the Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. wrote in a fascinating article in the New Yorker magazine some years ago, while profiling Colin Powell. At the time Powell was the Barack Obama of the 1996 presidential season.
On the currently popular Fox series, 24, we have our second Black president within the span of a few years: The current president, Wayne Palmer, is the brother of President David Palmer, who was assassinated. Now, how much of a stretch is this? A kind of Bush dynasty.
But let me get more serious. I am a fan of the late J. A. Rogers, a Black man who devoted his life to shredding myths about Blacks in the U.S. and in Africa. Not long before his death in 1966, Rogers, a former Pullman porter, published a pamphlet called The Five Negro Presidents. It's available in many Afro-centric bookstores, on eBay and on other web sites.
This is my thumbnail sketch: When it has been convenient in the US to label people as Colored or Negro or Black to deny them the rights and privileges of American citizenship, this has been done. If anyone could identify even the most minute Black lineage, then that could be held against you. Rogers wanted to turn this "even itty-bitty blackness makes you Black" into a positive. Thus, using public documents and published works, he "outed" Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln and Warren Harding. He did not name "Soul Brother President No. 5," but a journalist who produced a program about this for PBS told me that he was Dwight Eisenhower. Another historian has added Calvin Coolidge to this list.
Because of racial head trips, some people I've come across can imagine that Jefferson's father and uncles could have fathered children with their Black slaves, but cannot imagine that Jefferson could be the father of Sally Hemings' children. Or that President Jefferson himself could have had at least a little dab of blackness in him.
Maybe we are moving towards a place and time where these notions about race are irrelevant. After all, Obama is a White man as much as he is a Black man. His mother: a White woman from Kansas; his father: a Black man from Kenya; his stepfather: an Indonesian. He grew up in Hawaii and in Indonesia.
J. A. Rogers would have a field day with this!
"The most famous Black President of this century is one Douglass Dilman: he is the hero of The Man, a 1964 best-selling novel by Irving Wallace, which was later made into a movie starring James Earl Jones. Thrust into the Oval Office after a crisis of succession, President Dilman swiftly finds himself the target of popular animosity and Beltway intrigue," the Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. wrote in a fascinating article in the New Yorker magazine some years ago, while profiling Colin Powell. At the time Powell was the Barack Obama of the 1996 presidential season.
On the currently popular Fox series, 24, we have our second Black president within the span of a few years: The current president, Wayne Palmer, is the brother of President David Palmer, who was assassinated. Now, how much of a stretch is this? A kind of Bush dynasty.
But let me get more serious. I am a fan of the late J. A. Rogers, a Black man who devoted his life to shredding myths about Blacks in the U.S. and in Africa. Not long before his death in 1966, Rogers, a former Pullman porter, published a pamphlet called The Five Negro Presidents. It's available in many Afro-centric bookstores, on eBay and on other web sites.
This is my thumbnail sketch: When it has been convenient in the US to label people as Colored or Negro or Black to deny them the rights and privileges of American citizenship, this has been done. If anyone could identify even the most minute Black lineage, then that could be held against you. Rogers wanted to turn this "even itty-bitty blackness makes you Black" into a positive. Thus, using public documents and published works, he "outed" Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln and Warren Harding. He did not name "Soul Brother President No. 5," but a journalist who produced a program about this for PBS told me that he was Dwight Eisenhower. Another historian has added Calvin Coolidge to this list.
Because of racial head trips, some people I've come across can imagine that Jefferson's father and uncles could have fathered children with their Black slaves, but cannot imagine that Jefferson could be the father of Sally Hemings' children. Or that President Jefferson himself could have had at least a little dab of blackness in him.
Maybe we are moving towards a place and time where these notions about race are irrelevant. After all, Obama is a White man as much as he is a Black man. His mother: a White woman from Kansas; his father: a Black man from Kenya; his stepfather: an Indonesian. He grew up in Hawaii and in Indonesia.
J. A. Rogers would have a field day with this!
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Obama Makes A Move Towards The Presidency
Today Sen. Barack Obama announced plans to form an exploratory committee for a presidential candidacy. That's a step saying he seriously believes he has the chops to become President of the United States. I'm not yet convinced, based on his sparse track record. But I had a spirited debate with a friend yesterday who said that the very freshness that Obama brings to the political table makes him formidable. Obama himself says the U.S. is hungering for "a different kind of politics."
Here's how you can see what Obama said today on his own website: http://www.barackobama.com
Here's how you can see what Obama said today on his own website: http://www.barackobama.com
Sunday, January 14, 2007
"A Great Day in Harlem...A Great Day in the United States"
Hundreds of people made those kinds of declarations Sunday afternoon in a lavish Harlem inaugural celebration of Rep. Charlie Rangel’s elevation to what former President Clinton declared to be “the most powerful committee in the United States Congress.” He is now “Mr. Chairman” of the House Ways and Means Committee.
“It’s a new day,” Rangel himself declared, while describing a far-reaching agenda that includes addressing not just the war in Iraq, but also the rebuilding of the states devastated by Hurricane Katrina, poverty in general and education.
The Great Hall at the City College of New York could hardly contain people who came out to honor the chairman – and to eat all that great food supplied by Upper Manhattan restaurants.
Pioneering politicians were there, starting with the emcee, the new Lieutenant Govenor, David Paterson; his father, Basil; former Mayor David Dinkins; former Manhattan Borough President and masterful entrepreneur, Percy Sutton; former Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields and on and on and on. Entertainers present included Harry Belafonte, Danny Glover and Tony Bennett, who belted out an a capella version of “America the Beautiful.”
Basil Paterson, who with Dinkins, Sutton and Rangel have been powerhouses in the New York Democratic Party for decades, said he never doubted that Rangel would become chair of Ways and Means. “It took longer than I thought,” he told me.
Rangel said he often thought of leaving Congress, especially these last 12 or so years when Republicans ruled. But, as Assemblyman Keith Wright, who now literally sits in the seat once occupied by Rangel in the New York Legislature, told me: “He stayed the course.”
Now the question is what will he really be able to accomplish not only for Harlem, not only for Black Americans, but for all Americans. He is still a vigorous septuagenarian – and a wily politician.
Hail to Mr. Chairman! For now.
“It’s a new day,” Rangel himself declared, while describing a far-reaching agenda that includes addressing not just the war in Iraq, but also the rebuilding of the states devastated by Hurricane Katrina, poverty in general and education.
The Great Hall at the City College of New York could hardly contain people who came out to honor the chairman – and to eat all that great food supplied by Upper Manhattan restaurants.
Pioneering politicians were there, starting with the emcee, the new Lieutenant Govenor, David Paterson; his father, Basil; former Mayor David Dinkins; former Manhattan Borough President and masterful entrepreneur, Percy Sutton; former Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields and on and on and on. Entertainers present included Harry Belafonte, Danny Glover and Tony Bennett, who belted out an a capella version of “America the Beautiful.”
Basil Paterson, who with Dinkins, Sutton and Rangel have been powerhouses in the New York Democratic Party for decades, said he never doubted that Rangel would become chair of Ways and Means. “It took longer than I thought,” he told me.
Rangel said he often thought of leaving Congress, especially these last 12 or so years when Republicans ruled. But, as Assemblyman Keith Wright, who now literally sits in the seat once occupied by Rangel in the New York Legislature, told me: “He stayed the course.”
Now the question is what will he really be able to accomplish not only for Harlem, not only for Black Americans, but for all Americans. He is still a vigorous septuagenarian – and a wily politician.
Hail to Mr. Chairman! For now.
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