(ThyBlackMan.com) It is appalling and worrisome to see what is occurring in our country. Democrats and Republicans are moving to polar opposites in regard to opinions on job creation, budget reduction and taxes. Abandonment of the center, where any job creation plan will be resolved, dooms the unemployed to another horrific year of suffering. The blame for the jockeying to opposite poles can, in no small part, be laid at the doors of the leaders of both parties. However the greatest blame should be laid at the door of the President of the United States and his advisors. The Democratic and Republican Parties are responding in large part to an argument he and his advisors have advanced and pontificated. This argument is part of their re-election strategy. Look around you and listen to the rhetoric of the opposing factions of our country.
The super committee on debt reduction is deadlocked over raising tax revenues on the rich and reducing expenditures for many programs which help middle and lower class Americans. The “Occupy Wall Street Movement,” has staked out a position which divides the haves from the have nots, the 99% and the 1%. Congress refuses to pass the American Jobs Act as a package which the President proposed. He in term argues this Congress does not want to create jobs for unemployed Americans. Can you now guess what the President 
and his advisors strategic argument is? It is a classical argument and no matter how long and hard we debate it, it will not be resolved in our life time. It is a red herring. It is the kind of argument you would create and watch combative parties go at it, knowing there are any number of counter arguments each can make endlessly. It is the argument of rich versus poor. We have even seen gullible writers on this web site participate, arguing one side or the other. The reason it is a red herring, is because it distracts us from the #1 issue for Black America. And that issue is, this Administration has not brought to the table a credible job creation plan. Remember that Black people and especially Black men are suffering with historically high unemployment rates, not seen in decades. Instead of addressing the unemployment issue head on, the President and his advisors have chose to make the argument of rich versus poor the major issue.
Look, here is what our President said in his own words when he presented the American Jobs Act to Congress and the nation, “But know this: The next election is 14 months away. And the people who sent us here — the people who hired us to work for them — they don’t have the luxury of waiting 14 months. Some of them are living week to week, paycheck to paycheck, even day to day. They need help, and they need it now. I don’t pretend that this plan will solve all our problems. It should not be, nor will it be, the last plan of action we propose.” Those same people he talked about in that speech are still waiting. Yet, the discussion it appears that will be in the fore front in the coming months is that of increasing taxes on the very rich and reducing taxes on the middle class. The President and his advisors know that no serious adjustment to the tax code will even be contemplated, until after the election of 2012,if then. In the meantime, while in the background, Blacks suffer with debilitatingly high unemployment. Let’s face it, the ones who are living day to day, mentioned in his speech are not going to make it. They will not be with us as they slip off into homelessness.
You see, it a strategy to them, the President and his men, which makes some logical sense in a disturbingly insensitive way. The unemployment rate is not the same in every state and region of the country. In those regions of the country where the rate of unemployment is relatively low, the argument of rich versus poor passes for good office conversation and debates over the water cooler or in the break room. At home in those regions, the argument is great parlor conversation. We all feel a little more ebullient discussing raising taxes on billionaires. Think about it, don’t you feel a little empowered when you say, “I agree with Warren (Buffett), the rich should pay more taxes.” But, my friend it an argument which has been going on since and before Jesus Christ walked this earth and it was not resolved in His time because we are still having the same discussion, over 2,011 years later. Remember when Jesus said, in Mark 14:7, “For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have not always.”
In other regions of the country where the unemployment rate is high, the Administration falls back on the now familiar refrain, “We put forth the American Jobs Act, and the Republicans are refusing to pass it.” Now, we as voters shouldn’t lay a 100% of the blame at the Republicans feet. We have a two party system in this country, in case you forgot. They are the opposition party. By definition, “opposition parties” oppose. This is what they are suppose to do. In other words, any legislative plan the Administration comes up with, it should also include a plan on how to disadvantage the opposition party and get their legislation passed. Take the time to read the President’s statement again, even he said, … “I don’t pretend that this plan will solve all our problems. It should not be, nor will it be, the last plan of action we propose.” So, he himself knew when he proposed the American Jobs Act, it would not end the recession and he promised to bring us additional legislative efforts. However, what appears to pass for an effort at genuine legislation is this distracting promotion of the argument of rich versus poor. It should be disturbing to all of us. We should expect better.
When our children come home with poor grades, we interested parents sit them down and have that conversation. You know what that conversation is; It goes something like this, “I work hard every day, and all you have to do, is go out to that school and learn. I expect you to bring home better grades than this.” If we set high expectations for our children, why should we not have the same high expectations of our President. We will not get the Job Creation Plan we deserve unless we ask and demand he and the Democratic Party deliver. It is what we did in the sixties and seventies and guess what, a Democratic President by the name of …. let me think …Lyndon B. Johnson, delivered.
We do not help our children or ourselves by sitting this one out and it is appears that is what Blacks are doing. Suffering in silence, as we see more and more brothers and sisters slip into the abyss of poverty and crime. How do Blacks take the center stage back and make the issue about joblessness, our #1 issue, and not the Bush tax cuts and not Occupy Wall Street? Get pissed, if not for yourself, for your unemployed husband, wife, son, daughter, cousin, boyfriend, girlfriend, or friend!! Go to http://www.change.org/petitions/how-to-create-jobs-now-join-us and sign the petition detailing a plan of How To Create Jobs. If 100,000 signatures are received in a short period of time, this will bring the discussion of job creation front and center. It does not take a genius to see, if we lose this fight to set the agenda in regard to what the subject of the discussion and national debate will be about over the next few months, we lose a lot. And our lost will be so much greater than we can imagine. For as the months press down on us and they surely will, we will likely see our numbers in every category on which we are judged increase, from homicide to suicide.
To change our circumstance, we do not have to march and brave police assaults as our predecessors did in the sixties and seventies. We merely have to click onto a web site and sign our names, pushing the conversation of job creation back onto the front pages. We should not stop there. We should encourage every brother and every sister in every city, town and hamlet to do the same. Cease the day!! Cease the opportunity!! Our impact can be great and felt in Washington D.C.. Yes, as great as the civil rights marches of the past if the signatures get into the millions. Isn’t God great!!
I will close with this. There is an old African proverb which originated in Kenya. Its states, “When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.”
Guess who is the grass in the unemployment scenario, unfolding before our eyes?
Staff Writer; James Davis
More information about JD and his Deficit Neutral Stimulus Plan Can be founded at http://www.sslumpsum.com.
