Once based at the University of California, Berkeley, Zucman is back and campaigning for Proposition 40, which would impose an allegedly one-time five percent tax on the net worth of Californians worth more than $1 billion. Zucman, who coauthored the proposition, estimates that the tax could raise about $100 billion and claims that 90 percent of the proceeds would go to healthcare.

The California Legislative Analyst’s office is far more cautious, saying it would raise only “tens of billions” and could cause a long-term loss of income-tax revenue as wealthy people leave the state with the companies they created.

I’ve written plenty about why wealth taxes are economically destructive, administratively nightmarish and unlikely to achieve anything close to what their advocates promise. But Zucman’s prescription is wrong for a more fundamental reason, as his (and my) native country shows: Raising taxes to fuel ever-larger demands for government spending is a recipe for disaster.

Unless you’ve been living in a remote cave recently, you’ve likely seen all the protests and destruction in France. But do you know why it’s happening?

As another economist, Paul Krugman, rightly noted back in 2017, “France offers a social safety net beyond the wildest dreams of U.S. progressives: guaranteed high-quality health care for all, generous paid leave for new parents, universal pre-K, and much more.”

For decades, France has answered any perceived desire with government spending, then responded to the resulting fiscal problem by seeking new revenue sources. Today, French government spending consumes roughly 58% of GDP.

Krugman gloated that France wasn’t suffering social collapse and speculated that it was due to all the spending. He certainly can’t say that anymore. In fact, he is now worried that France may be on the precipice of a debt crisis. The truth is that France hasn’t done well for some time, even when Krugman cheered its spending.

One of the groups in the street today, young people, has faced widespread unemployment for a long time. The youth unemployment rate in France (ages 15-24) has hovered between 17 percent and 27 percent since 2000. In the second quarter of 2026, it was 21.6 percent, against 14.8 percent in the Eurozone and 9.9 percent in the U.S.

French people also pay some of the highest taxes in the developed world, and they’re not happy with the return. The government already takes more than 52 percent of the country’s output in revenue, runs deficits exceeding five percent of GDP and has accumulated debt approaching 120 percent of GDP. Nonetheless, French students complain that the government is shortchanging schools, while everyone sees that it is shortchanging its army and police.

The students aren’t wrong to feel left out. At The Two Cents Substack, Hoover Institution scholar Hanno Lustig calculates that, between 1995 and 2024, spending on social protection and health (most of which benefits older people) rose from 53.1 percent to 58.7 percent of all French government spending. The share devoted to education, defense and public order fell from 15.2 percent to 13.7 percent. Transportation fell from 5.3 percent to 3.8 percent.

In other words, France has built an enormous welfare state, much of it devoted to older citizens, while letting other state capacities and basic services fall apart. As transfers of wealth swallow a larger share of the budget, everything else gets squeezed.

That is the fiscal ratchet Californians should worry about when Zucman tells them Proposition 40 is necessary to “save” healthcare. Proponents claim Washington “cut” Medicaid, but that language is misleading. California’s deficit started long before any Washington spending reductions. Besides, federal Medicaid spending isn’t falling — not even close. The Congressional Budget Office estimates it will reach $708 billion in 2026, eight percent more than in 2025. What Washington did in the 2025 budget reconciliation law was reduce Medicaid’s future growth relative to previous projections, partly by changing eligibility and enrollment rules and financing arrangements.

This is how the ratchet works. Once the government projects a spending increase, anything less becomes a cut. And once Washington fails to finance the entire projected increase, Californians are told that Sacramento must backfill the missing money. And how should it do that? Conveniently, by creating an entirely new tax.

France has run this experiment for decades. It has an incredibly generous welfare state paid for with very high taxes; it’s even tried a wealth tax and has a value-added tax, yet somehow it’s never enough. Its welfare state has not eliminated scarcity. It has merely transferred the job of rationing scarce resources to politicians.

Zucman looks at California and sees hundreds of billions of dollars of private wealth waiting to solve a public finance problem. Californians should look across the Atlantic and ask a different question: What happens after politicians decide that every spending adjustment can be delayed until tomorrow by finding another pot of private wealth?

France should not be sending California tax advice. It should be sending a warning.

Written by Veronique de Rugy

Official website; http://twitter.com/veroderugy

What should trouble every citizen is the moment protest becomes a license to loot, burn and terrorize. A peaceful march makes an argument. A mob that smashes a shop window silences one. Hundreds of thousands marched peacefully in France while violent groups targeted public buildings, looted businesses and attacked police. The distinction matters: The people who came to protest are not all responsible for the people who came to destroy.

But destruction is not made less serious because it is committed under the banner of a cause. A business is not an abstraction called “capitalism.” It is someone’s years of work, savings, risk and hope. It is the employee who depends on a paycheck, the family that owns the storefront, and the neighborhood that needs its services. When rioters break into shops and set fires, they do not strike a distant system. They injure ordinary people and weaken the community they claim to defend.

There are activists who openly reject capitalism and treat private enterprise as an enemy. Their ideas deserve debate. But no grievance, however sincere, justifies burning a city or destroying someone else’s livelihood. Nor should we assume that every protester is an anti-capitalist or that every crowd is bent on destruction. These demonstrations have arisen from a range of causes, and many people have protested peacefully. The violent fringe must be held responsible for its own actions.

The historical lesson is as old as the revolutions people invoke: Anger can expose real injustice, but it can also become a force that consumes the very institutions needed to correct it. When a movement decides that every law is illegitimate, every business is exploitation, and every opponent is an enemy, it stops seeking reform and begins testing how much of society it can break. The French Revolution began with demands for liberty and representation; its descent into the Terror showed how quickly the language of justice can be turned against the innocent. History does not say that every protest leads to catastrophe. It warns that no society is immune when grievance is used to excuse political violence.

That is why leadership matters. Governments should address the conditions that drive people to despair: rising costs, failing services, schools that do not serve students, and housing that working people cannot afford. But they also have a basic duty to protect the public and enforce the law. Accountability is not oppression. Allowing arson and looting to proceed unchecked is not compassion; it abandons residents, workers and business owners to whoever is most willing to use force.

Say what you must about Donald Trump, but I believe he would move quickly to stop this kind of disorder before it gathered momentum. A president’s responsibility is to defend the public’s safety and the constitutional right to protest both at once. That means clear rules, capable law enforcement and consequences for people who burn buildings or attack others. It also means protecting peaceful demonstrators’ rights and holding officers to the law. Order imposed without restraint becomes abuse; freedom without order can be taken over by the most violent faction.

We should take the warning in these scenes of fire and wreckage seriously. If political actors teach people that destruction is a legitimate way to express anger, they should not be surprised when the destruction spreads beyond the first target. The city hall, school, shop and public square are not symbols that can be replaced without cost. They are part of the shared inheritance that allows people with opposing views to live together.

Europe should not have to burn to make its leaders listen. And no cause should be allowed to turn the streets into a battlefield where ordinary people pay the price for someone else’s ideology. Protest can demand change. Violence can only threaten the society that change is supposed to serve.

Written by Armstrong Williams

Official website; http://twitter.com/Arightside

If they had advanced from the National League championship round and then beat the American League champion the Dodgers would have become the first National League team to accomplish such a feat and one of just a handful of professional teams in any sports to win three consecutive championships.

However, the Dodgers failed in their attempt to three-peat. It would have been a testament to the players and the management of the organization.

The Dodgers probably more than any baseball or professional sports team has been the avant-garde. The organization that broke the color barrier with the signing of Jackie Robinson.

That brought Latino fans to ball parks by signing players like Fernando Valenzuela and Pedro Guerrero. Japanese trailblazer Hideo Nomo over thirty years ago and now with Japanese and other Asian fans buying tickets and game shirts featuring the names of Dodgers stars Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki.

The sports columnists and other talking heads had bad-mouthed and blamed the Dodgers the entire season for an expected owners’ lockout. Now they were fast to declare the Dodgers failure to win a third consecutive championship to the Dodgers players being old, tired looking and no longer hungry.

Maybe, however, the Dodgers ran into a team that at the moment was playing better baseball then they were playing. A huge negative about the current MLB playoff format is that a team with a mediocre regular season sneaks into the playoffs and gets hot and lucky and ends up winning the World Series. This year’s World Series could have easily been between the Astros and Phillies.

But the real reason the Dodgers did not make it to the World Series this year is simple. It had nothing to do with being old, tired or not hungry. The reason the Dodgers failed to make it a third straight time to the World Series is because on July 23rd of this year they went to the White House.

After going to the White House, the Dodgers season went from dominant to mediocre. The next game after going to the White House they won, then they went on to lose seven straight games. They went from looking invincible and playing that way to a team that over the next several weeks basically did not win a series.

They went on gallantly despite injuries to star players to limp to the finish line. Several of their players who made the National League All Star team shortly after July 23rd ended up being injured.

For many Dodgers fans they were not surprised the Dodgers failed to three-peat after going to the White House. Some openly predicted that outcome because they went.

Many could not understand why the team would go to the White House after its current occupant had basically declared war on the city of Los Angeles. Who sent armed troops to the city for no reason other than to cause chaos and confusion. Who would state that Iran could “take out” the city of Los Angeles as if it was no big thing. But they went to the White House.

The Dodgers  have players, stars players, from Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Cuba and Canada all places where the current occupant of the White House has openly expressed hostility and aggression.

So why did Dodgers’ management “encourage” its players to go to the White House? Was it fearful like some countries, universities, media outlets, non-governmental organizations, major law firms and corporations to stand up to evil and instead take a knee and shallow their dignity and integrity?

The criticism of the Dodgers going to the White House had nothing to do with politics, but everything to do with right and wrong, good and evil. Unfortunately, after going to the White House, the Dodgers were cursed.

Yes, cursed. There are probably many in this age of smartphones, AI and all the other technological wonders which demonstrate how advanced mankind is find the idea preposterous. Yes, the advances in technology which makes the idea of curses, witches, devils, good and bad, evil and even God irrelevant.

Yes, technological advances which allows man to be quicker and more efficient in its killing of other men. Yes, we may hold smartphones and wear fitness watches and AI glasses but evil is everywhere and man remains a troglodyte.

Evil does exist and Satan and his army are working overtime. In fact, he is having a heyday.

One needs to look no further than 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The evil that has oozed out of there is unprecedented in US history. Again, this is not a political statement, but a statement based on morality, goodness and righteousness.

The suggestion is made to whoever wins the World Series this year and teams that win championships in other sports that they refuse to go to the White House. That is if they want to have another championship season until the White House undergoes an utter and thorough exorcism.

Staff Writer; Al Alatunji

Question or comment regarding this article? Feel free to send a message to: Alatunji@ThyBlackMan.com.

Employers of such workers are blaming the raids for the rising cost of housing, a hot topic at the moment. But then you hear of a builder in Jacksonville, Florida, complaining that because of the supposed labor shortage, framers who used to be paid $20 an hour may now cost $40 an hour or more.

A framer cuts the wood and erects the skeleton of the house. It is brutal work, hoisting 50-pound beams while balancing on open framing high above the ground. Framers work in bitter cold and torrid heat. They get rained on.

It would seem fair to pay these guys $40 an hour. On a 100-degree day, I passed Spanish-speaking workers putting in long hours on a high-rise construction project. One took off his T-shirt and wrung out the sweat while laughing. It was a union job, so he was almost certainly documented.

And I thought, yes, America needs immigrants like him and furthermore is lucky to get them. Millions of migrants without papers have been working in this country for years without running afoul of other laws. They shouldn’t be rounded up. They should be made legal.

So, what am I saying about current immigration policy? I’m no fan of Trump, but he does get credit for making clear that the border is closed to unauthorized entries. An undocumented workforce hurts the wages and benefits of legal workers. It should not be used as a way to cut costs for others.

Teachers’ unions would have a nervous breakdown if schools could start hiring Australians without papers as a money-saving measure. Somehow, we’ve looked the other way when the illegal workforce is concentrated on hard manual labor. Americans buying homes thanks to their market-rate pay should be paying their construction workers market rates.

The reasons so many Americans can’t afford a house, or think they can’t, are varied. And not every economist agrees that there even is a serious “housing shortage.” The White House’s 2026 Economic Report of the President cited a shortage of 10 million homes. Estimates from mainstream economists range from 5 million to almost no shortfall at all.

The economist at Homes.com criticized the White House number for measuring only single-family homes built pre-2008 and not apartments and other multi-family dwellings.

A county-level analysis places the shortage at about 4.5 million homes in California and virtually none in North Dakota and West Virginia. Home prices are a function of supply and demand. There’s fierce demand in select areas, especially on the coasts, where land for building is hemmed in by oceans.

Some on both the left and the right blame these areas’ zoning laws for the difficulty of building houses. But these places are already densely populated. Ditch all their zoning rules, and you ruin the quality of life that made them desirable in the first place.

High interest rates also make buying a home with a mortgage more expensive. And many homebuyers insist on single-family homes that are far grander than the original 750-square-foot Levittown model. The average new single-family house is about 2,400 square feet.

America needs more immigrants, both with fancy tech degrees and willing muscle. Americans have a right to decide how many may come and what skills they bring.

A one-time dispensation for good foreigners who took jobs our government didn’t care about protecting back then would be in order. But undercutting domestic workers with illegal ones to push wages lower is vastly unfair.

Written by Froma Harrop

Official website; https://twitter.com/FromaHarrop

The U.S. Constitution was ratified to create and to restrain the government. It established boundaries beyond which the government may not venture, even when it invokes national security, public order, economic necessity, emergency or the will of a popular majority. Its purpose is not to make government more powerful but to keep the government off the people’s backs.

By that measure, the American Constitution is a failure. Formally, the document physically survives, its ceremonies continue, and politicians swear their oaths to abide it. Yet functionally, the government it was designed to restrain has accumulated vast and totalitarian powers that its authors would never recognize.

Power grows, concentrates and perpetuates itself, while liberty contracts. Every emergency supplies a justification for new authority. Every temporary restriction threatens to become permanent. Every president discovers powers that his predecessors claimed but that the Constitution never authorized. And every generation is told that the latest surrender of freedom is necessary to preserve freedom itself.

The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 criminalized criticisms of government officials. Newspaper editors and political opponents faced prosecution. The government that had declared independence from a distant king was punishing Americans for criticizing their own elected officials.

The contradiction was extraordinary. The First Amendment had been adopted precisely to prevent the federal government from suppressing political expression; and it was ratified by some of the same human beings who later voted to undermine it. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison resisted these measures, recognizing that a government that could legally determine which political opinions may be expressed will eventually confuse criticism with sedition. And so it did.

During the Civil War, the Lincoln administration suspended habeas corpus, imposed military dictatorships which arrested civilians, and directed armies to kill civilians. In Ex Parte Milligan (1866), the Supreme Court invalidated Lincoln’s arrests without trial and affirmed a principle that ought to be self-evident: Neither Congress nor the president can simply replace constitutional government with personal or unaccountable authority.

But that did not stop Woodrow Wilson from arresting those who verbally opposed the draft or Congress from establishing the administrative state as a fourth and unaccountable branch of government or FDR from arresting Japanese-Americans for being Japanese-Americans.

The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 created the Federal Reserve System, a central banking institution with authority over monetary conditions. It triggered unlimited money creation, and the eventual abandonment of gold convertibility in 1933 and the end of the dollar’s international gold convertibility in 1971.

The Federal Reserve today creates money whenever it wants, and its monetary expansion weakens the purchasing power of money and transfers costs onto future generations.

The National Security Act of 1947 created the CIA and established the national security state as the fifth branch of government, truly unaccountable. The United States had emerged from World War II with unprecedented military power and global ambitions. Rather than return to a posture of restraint, Washington established over 850 worldwide permanent military and intelligence institutions designed for a world of perpetual confrontation and American domination.

The CIA was created to collect intelligence, not to serve as the president’s personal army. Nevertheless, its history of secret interventions, covert actions, murders, tortures and even domestic operations conducted beyond ordinary public scrutiny raises a fundamental constitutional question: Who controls the government when the government acts in secret?

The national security state also perpetuates itself. Agencies justify their budgets through threats; military establishments seek new missions; presidents discover that secret operations are politically easier than openly debated wars. What began as a response to a particular international crisis becomes a permanent structure of government. The republic that once warned against standing armies and foreign entanglements is now a failing empire that thrives on both.

The Patriot Act of 2001 extended this pattern into domestic surveillance. Enacted after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, it radically expanded surveillance authorities available to federal agencies, and it unleashed the federal government’s mass suspicionless and warrantless surveillance; today capturing every keystroke and conversation transmitted on fiber optic cables anywhere in the U.S.

Across these episodes, the pattern repeats itself. Government restricts speech in the name of stability, expands executive power in the name of war, weakens monetary discipline in the name of economic management, conducts secret operations in the name of security and broadens surveillance in the name of preventing terrorism. Each measure arrives with an explanation. Each emergency is declared exceptional. Yet the accumulated result is a government more powerful and a citizen less secure in his liberty. And none is countenanced by the Constitution.

Was Jefferson right that the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants? His famous language arose from the revolutionary generation’s experience and its fear of concentrated power. It expressed a belief that liberty cannot survive without eternal vigilance and a continuous willingness to resist oppression.

The deeper question is whether the Constitution can preserve liberty when the people entrusted with enforcing it benefit from its erosion. The answer depends upon whether Americans treat government as their servant or their master.

In the long march of history, power tends to grow because those who possess it have incentives to retain it, while those who surrender their freedoms rarely recover them. All of these attacks on liberty were enacted or performed with popular support even though the Constitution was crafted to prevent Congress and the president from popularly or unpopularly impairing personal freedom.

If Americans fail to regard freedom as a birthright, the Constitution may survive as a historical document while the constitutional republic it created becomes a bankrupt failure.

The Constitution cannot save a people who have abandoned the principles from which it sprang. Ultimately, liberty survives only when the governed insist that the government remain within its constitutional limits. If it won’t, we must alter or abolish it.

Written by Judge Andrew P. Napolitano

Official website; https://twitter.com/Judgenap

A billionaire in California who invests some of his money in the movie industry lives in a beachside mansion in Malibu.

For which of these two entrepreneurs would Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) support a tax cut?

It would be the moviemaker.

When the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act came up in Congress in 2017, the Heritage Foundation published a report summarizing what it would do. “The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is the most sweeping update to the U.S. tax code in more than 30 years,” said Heritage’s analysis. “The recently released bill would lower taxes on businesses and individuals and unleash higher wages, more jobs, and untold opportunity through a larger and more dynamic economy.”

“The framework lowers rates for almost every tax bracket,” said the analysis. “The current seven brackets remain, but with new generally higher income thresholds and lower rates.”

Schiff, who then served in the House of Representatives, was outraged by the proposal.

“I just voted NO on the Republican tax plan,” Schiff said in a 2017 Facebook post.

He argued that he was standing up for the little guy and against increasing the federal debt.

“I support a tax reform that would simplify the tax code and ease the burden on the middle class and small businesses, and one that would be revenue neutral and not increase the deficit,” said Schiff.

“When the GOP started talking about tax reform, they said they wanted to pass a bill that was deficit neutral and wouldn’t add to our national debt, which already exceeds $20 trillion,” Schiff said in the post. “After years of railing against the growing debt, it’s the height of hypocrisy to put forward such an irresponsible bill.”

Despite Schiff’s opposition, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act became law.

In 2025, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act made permanent the lower tax rates enacted in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which otherwise would have expired at the end of that year. Schiff objected to the tax provisions in this bill also.

A report published by his Senate office criticized the bill for “providing massive tax cuts to President Trump’s millionaire and billionaire friends.”

In fact, federal tax revenues have not declined in the years since the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was enacted. They have increased.

In fiscal year 2017, the last full fiscal year before the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was signed into law, total federal revenues were approximately $3.314 trillion, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement. In fiscal 2026, they were $5.403 trillion, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement.

In a speech on the Senate floor on June 30, 2025, Schiff described the tax cuts preserved by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act as a benefit for the wealthiest Americans. “If you are in the top 0.1 percent of income earners, making more than $5 million a year, you will get a $346,000 tax cut,” he said. “How is that fair? How is that right?”

But now Schiff is proposing a tax cut targeted at a very specific group — and they are not poor.

On Sept. 24, he introduced the Motion Picture, Television, and Entertainment Revitalization Act in the Senate. He has been joined in cosponsoring this bill by four Republican senators and four Democrats.

“This bill establishes a federal business tax credit for a percentage of the compensation paid for services performed in the United States related to a qualified film or television production,” says its official summary.

“The bill,” it says, “defines a qualified film or television production as any production that is: a feature film, television pilot, or television season; produced in the ordinary course of business for commercial purposes; capitalized; completed during a tax year with more than $1 million in total costs; and filmed in the United States for 75% of the photography days.”

It also notes that “the tax credit may be transferred to an unrelated third party in exchange for cash.”

Schiff was completely candid in describing this proposal as a subsidy for the movie and television industry.

“For years, Schiff has highlighted the need to increase film production in America and has continued to build bipartisan support in Congress for his federal film incentive proposal,” said a press release published by his Senate office.

“A study published just this week found that the share of production spending by U.S. studios on movies that are made primarily or partially in the U.S. declined from 74 percent to 24 percent over the last quarter century,” said Schiff. “That is a staggering loss in the industry, but this tax credit, which is a base credit of 20 percent, with additional 5 percent credits going up to 30 percent of a tax credit, is layered upon whatever the state of California or other states do. That is powerful enough for the first time to really bring not just TV production back, but film production back, and all the multiplier impacts that has on the economy.”

“We’ve got to get this done,” said Schiff.

So, the opponent of the Trump tax cuts that reduced the tax burden on small family-owned business all across the country now believes that tax cuts — at least for the movie and television industries in Hollywood — can help this nation’s economy.

Written by Terence P. Jeffrey

Official website; http://twitter.com/terryjeffrey

Think about where this thing starts. A nineteen year old born in Brooklyn and raised on Long Island landed a spot on Saturday Night Live in 1980, back when critics had already buried the show and taken to calling it Saturday Night Dead. The original cast had scattered to the movies. Ratings sagged, and NBC was questioning the show’s future. Then one skinny teenager began carrying entire sketches with a confidence that made him impossible to ignore. His arrival helped breathe new life into a struggling program. Jean Doumanian gave him the gig. Dick Ebersol later recognized what the network had on its hands and gave Murphy room to become a superstar.

By 21 he landed in 48 Hrs., a gritty buddy cop picture starring Nick Nolte. Earlier versions of the project had involved discussions about Clint Eastwood and Richard Pryor, but neither ended up in the finished film. In walked the newcomer, playing a fast talking convict named Reggie Hammond, and the chemistry between him and Nolte turned the picture into something special. Folks left the theater quoting the rookie as much as the veteran. That was not luck. What you witnessed there was a kid establishing himself as a movie star before Hollywood had even figured out what to do with him.

Here is where the permission piece really matters. Hollywood in the early 80s had already witnessed the box office power of Richard Pryor and Sidney Poitier, yet opportunities for young Black leading men remained limited. Beverly Hills Cop had originally been developed with Mickey Rourke attached before Sylvester Stallone became involved. When Stallone departed, Paramount brought Murphy aboard. The film became the highest grossing domestic release of 1984, earning more than $234 million and eventually surpassing Ghostbusters. His face sold that ticket. Murphy’s timing helped build a franchise. Paramount suddenly had one of the biggest movie stars in the country, with a 23 year old Black man’s name stamped all over its success.

His run through the 1980s still looks unreal on paper. Trading Places had already shown his range in 1983. After Beverly Hills Cop came The Golden Child and Beverly Hills Cop II. Coming to America arrived in 1988, where Murphy played multiple characters and handed us a Black fairy tale with a king, a prince, and a barbershop full of old heads, years before Hollywood began making representation a regular part of its public conversations. His 1983 HBO special Delirious and the 1987 theatrical concert film Raw proved his stand up could command enormous audiences without a supporting cast. All told, his movies have generated billions of dollars worldwide, an extraordinary achievement for a brother who entered an industry where opportunities for Black leading men had long been restricted.

He never once asked if any of it was allowed. Dude just kept winning until the argument died of exhaustion.

I want the young folks reading this to sit with the weight of that, because the ground he broke is the ground they stroll across today. Chris Rock, Martin Lawrence, Dave Chappelle, Kevin Hart, and generations of Black comedians have followed paths that Murphy helped make wider. Every brother who dreamed of carrying a major Hollywood comedy could look at what Eddie accomplished during the Reagan years and recognize that the possibilities had changed. He was not the first Black comedian to become a movie star, but few had reached that level of mainstream success so young. The blueprint was simple and merciless. Be undeniable. Make the gatekeepers irrelevant.

So what is he doing right now, at 65 years old? Still refusing to coast, that’s what.

Earlier this month, word came down that Eddie is attached to star in a Peacock drama titled The Chairman, developed by Matthew Weiner, the mind behind Mad Men. Here’s the wild part. After more than four decades in entertainment, Murphy could be preparing to headline his first live action scripted television series. The project remains in development, so there is no guarantee it will reach the screen. Still, the possibility says plenty about his appetite for something different. Rather than returning to another familiar comedy role, he is exploring dramatic television. Picture it, a sixty something legend still looking toward rooms he has not conquered yet.

Plenty else is cooking too. Back in 2024 he strapped on Axel Foley’s badge one more time for Netflix in Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, and the revival found an eager streaming audience, proof the old magic still travels. Last year he cracked the curtain for a documentary called Being Eddie, a rare peek behind a life he has guarded carefully for decades. Come June 30, 2027, he is scheduled to return as Donkey in Shrek 5. That lovable character introduced him to a generation of kids who never knew Buckwheat, Mr. Robinson, or his Gumby. A George Clinton biopic is also in development with Bill Condon, his old Dreamgirls director, which feels about right. The comedian who helped define an era of entertainment is preparing to portray the man who gave us Parliament-Funkadelic. He has also confirmed plans to play Inspector Clouseau in a new Pink Panther movie, another chance to put his own stamp on a character audiences already know.

At 65, with more than four decades in entertainment behind him, Eddie still approaches new opportunities with the hunger of somebody just getting started.

People forget how much nerve that early stretch demanded. Richard Pryor had kicked open doors already, no argument, though his genius often ran dark and jagged, a brilliant open wound. Young Eddie came through with a different kind of confidence, grinning one minute and cutting somebody down with a perfectly timed joke the next. He aimed himself dead at the center of American pop culture and proceeded to take his place there. Bill Cosby would soon dominate television with The Cosby Show, while Sidney Poitier had already established a legacy that helped change Hollywood’s understanding of Black leading men. Both earned their places in entertainment history. Murphy did something different with his shot. In he strolled, loud and young and certain, daring the whole machine to tell him no.

They couldn’t keep him out. That’s the entire story right there. More than four decades after his breakthrough, the brother is still working. New projects are already lined up for next year, with others in development.

I’ve watched a mess of careers rise and crash since the night I first heard that Raw cackle rattle through my cousin’s living room. Trends burned out. Comics flared up and vanished. The lone constant across four decades has been a Brooklyn kid who decided early that his gift was not up for a vote, then proved the point season after season until the doubters ran clean out of air.

That is what we mean by ruling without a permission slip. You don’t haggle over your worth. Instead you lay it on the floor, loud, until the room has no choice left but to nod. That is the lesson Eddie Murphy handed a whole lineage of Black men, in real time, on the largest stage going.

So no, he never waited around to be let in. He went ahead and bought the building.

Staff Writer; Lee Walker

This brother is a fitness trainer with 12 years of experience, focused on building strength, clarity, and real health within the Black community. Through his writing, Mr. Walker hopes to uplift younger Black men and men in general through honest conversations about fitness, financial pressure, fatherhood, discipline, mental wellness, and the importance of brotherhood.

Have questions? Reach me at LeeW@ThyBlackMan.com.

]]> https://thyblackman.com/2026/10/19/eddie-murphy-black-men-hollywood-comedy-legacy/feed/ 0 https://thyblackman.com/2026/10/19/mlb-needs-reset-16-teams-no-playoffs-new-rules/ https://thyblackman.com/2026/10/19/mlb-needs-reset-16-teams-no-playoffs-new-rules/#respond Mon, 19 Oct 2026 06:40:15 +0000 https://thyblackman.com/?p=143194 (ThyBlackMan.com) With the MLB season over – yes over, let’s be honest no one other than the players’ families of the three teams remaining have any interest in this year’s World Series – and a possible players’ walkout looming, now is a good time to think about making baseball relevant again.

All season long the talking heads whined about how the Dodgers were destroying baseball because they were able and willing to pay more for players than other teams. That because they played in a larger population and media market the team’s owners had an advantage over smaller market team owners.

The talking heads and others however could not explain why the Angels who play in the same Los Angeles market as the Dodgers and teams like the Mets who have a payroll similar to the Dodgers are at the bottom of their divisions. Why a team like the White Sox despite playing in big market Chicago for two consecutive years lost over 100 games.

However, facts are not something those pushing the supposed inequality and lack of parity argument have on their side. This year’s World Series will feature the Brewers against the winner of the Rays and Guardians American League championship.

For the average baseball fans, they would be hard pressed to name four of the players on all three remaining teams. Maybe the owners and their organization need to be more creative and innovative in marketing their players and teams instead of crying about the Dodgers.

But since we cannot expect the owners and talking heads to be creative and innovative in helping baseball to one again have some relevancy, how about we let a real baseball fan do that?

1. Return MLB back to eight teams in the National League and eight teams in the American League like it had been for many years until the 1960s. Let’s return back to 16 teams and only those teams that have a successful history of being able to host a team get a team.

That does not mean that an expansion team that came into MLB would be eliminated. The Mets for example would be allowed to remain in MLB because they clearly have been able to financially host a team. There are other teams who have been around since the early days of the 1900s who can’t and should no longer have a team.

Instead of having 30 teams, many of which are carrying mediocre players to fill playing rosters, having 16 teams should allow for greater parity between teams. Parity between teams is a common refrain heard over and over again by the owners and talking heads as to why there is a need for a player’s salary cap.

If MLB wants to add additional teams, then it should look to have teams in Puerto Rico, Mexico, Japan, Dominican Republic, Venezuela and South Korea. All places where baseball is huge and which currently are sending significant numbers of players to MLB. Not just numbers but quality players.

Granted with just 16 teams in MLB most teams probably would have very few American born players on these teams. However, the countries which are filling the ranks of MLB should not be faulted.

The reality is that baseball is no longer the national pastime of the US. Or to put it another way, American born youth are not playing baseball and have little to any interest in baseball. MLB needs to find some creative and innovative ways to market baseball to American youth. It has done a piss poor job so far.

MLB needs to eliminate its playoff format and return back to the team in the American League with the best record playing the team in the National league for the World Series. I know this idea will not be popular with media outlets and bettors, but the playoff format has made a mockery of the World Series.

The World Series used to mean something. It no longer does when you have a team with a regular season record at .500 or lower playing against another team with a similar season record in the World Series.

It is no longer the best versus the best, but a crap shoot between two teams that had a few lucky bounces during the playoffs. Similar to the NCAA March Madness tournament. Yes, the media outlets and the bettors like it, but how often does the unquestionably best team end up with the crown?

2. MLB has made certain changes which have not been helpful. One of them was interleague play. Interleague play takes away from the specialness of the World Series. Get rid of it.

Get rid of the pitch count. It was adopted by MLB to speed up the game as if shortening the length of the game would make it more attractive to a youthful market to follow the game. Not only has it not lent itself to bringing younger fans to the game, but it has also alienated older fans who remember the time when there was nothing better than a doubleheader that took all day.

A doubleheader to that fan was the equivalent of a follower of Judaism going to Jerusalem, a follower of Islam going to Mecca and a follower of Christianity going to Bethlehem all rounded up in one.

If a person is not interested or does not have the time to watch a game that is on them. Don’t have time, don’t watch, don’t attend.

The two throw over to a base with a runner. A terrible rule. Baseball is a game within a game within a game. That is its beauty. The stolen base. The steal of home. The hit and run. The sacrifice bunt and the suicide bunt. Signs and counter signs. The moves and counter moves. That is true baseball.

3. One-year contracts for all players with a base salary and cap of $1 million. Once a current player’s contract ends the player would be subject to a one-year contract worth a $1 million with incentives that could result in the players making upwards of $50 million for one year if the player met those incentives.

All teams would be limited to providing the same incentives in terms of objectives and money. For example, if a player won the MVP award for that year, the player would receive an additional $10 million. A player who came in second would receive $5 million, third $3 million. It would be the same for the CY Young award.

A person would be entitled to automate bonus money for playing 150 games each season. A player who played every game that season would receive a bonus.

A pitcher who pitched 25 or 30 games and/or a certain number of innings would receive bonus money for that. The league would develop an extensive list of incentives based on position and performance which would be the standard contract throughout the league.

Attractive incentive money for hits, runs scored, winning the triple crown, winning the batting crown, lowest earned run average and so on and so on.

There would be no more free agency. Send the agents packing. Teams could trade players, but no money would be included in such trades. Strictly player for player or player for players trades.

Return back to allowing players to play for one team their entire career. Fans want to be able to identify with players as if the player were family in good years and bad. The team might not have a great record, but there will be players on that team who fans of the team feel a special connection with year in and year. Nowadays it is hard keeping track as to who is on a team and who is not.

Return baseball back to the fans, not the agents, not the owners and the player’s union but back to the fans and the ball players.

Staff Writer; Al Alatunji

Question or comment regarding this article? Feel free to send a message to: Alatunji@ThyBlackMan.com.

A Deep Dive into a Soul Music Classic…

Few songs capture the push and pull of longing and guilt like Bobby Womack’s 1985 hit, “I Wish He Didn’t Trust Me So Much.” The track lingers in that uneasy space where desire meets regret, and you can feel the weight of every choice being made. Womack’s lived-in voice makes it all sound real. Even after the song ends, it stays with you.

Written by Harold Payne, Pete Luboff, and James Eubanks, the song was released as the lead single from Womack’s album So Many Rivers. Womack co-produced it with James Gadson, keeping his voice front and center. Britain’s Robert Palmer adds subtle guitar lines beneath the vocals, while Brazilian percussionist Paulinho Da Costa drives the rhythm with vibrant energy. Jazz legend Dorothy Ashby’s delicate harp brings an elegant touch, and Vesta Williams, before her solo career, adds warmth and depth alongside the session singers.

What gives the song its power isn’t just the story, but the way Womack delivers it. The understated 1980s production sharpens the emotions without ever getting in the way. One of Womack’s first music videos, a simple studio performance, gave audiences a clear look at his emotive timing and expression.

Womack was more than a singer; as a producer, musician, and songwriter, he brought unmatched artistry to every track. Throughout his career, he paired emotional honesty with musical sophistication, and “I Wish He Didn’t Trust Me So Much” stands as a prime example, exploring deep internal conflict. Decades later, the song continues to resonate as a personal confession, a reflection on human desire, and a story of temptation, longing, and consequence.

From the first lines, Womack openly acknowledges the depth of friendship and trust:

“I’m the best friend he’s got / I’d give him the shirt off my back

He knows he can trust me with his life.”

That pride makes the conflict all the more painful, threatening something he truly values.
A wry, ironic observation soon reveals the attraction simmering beneath the surface:

“How can he be so blind? / We have both got the same good taste.”

Humor and guilt coexist in these lines, showing the tension between awareness and denial. Womack then takes responsibility, refusing to place blame:

“Listen to me… / It’s not that she leads me on / I’m getting there all by myself.”

That’s the temptation moving him willingly, intensifying the moral conflict. Finally, he confesses the emotional pull he can’t fully control:

“Though I swear, oh, it is not my will / But there is a way… there is a way she makes me feel.”

Despite his loyalty and good intentions, desire exerts its own force, capturing the fragile edges of human weakness—the space between what we know is right and what we feel.

Culturally, the song reflects mid-1980s R&B’s willingness to explore the complexities of relationships. Music and lyrics work together so perfectly that every note hits just right, creating a sound you can’t forget. In moments like this, you can imagine everyone in the studio knowing they had something special on their hands.

Artist: Bobby Womack
Track: “I Wish He Didn’t Trust Me So Much”
Album: So Many Rivers (1985)
Songwriters: Harold Payne, Pete Luboff, James Eubanks
Producers: Bobby Womack, James Gadson

Lyrics from “I Wish He Didn’t Trust Me So Much” performed by Bobby Womack.
Written by Harold Payne, Pete Luboff, and James Eubanks. © 1985 MCA Records.

A collective thank you to the artists, songwriters, producers, musicians, engineers, and music professionals responsible for shaping the sound and soul of these recordings.

Staff Writer; Patricia “Trish” Brooks

Trish is an accomplished writer whose journey has been shaped by more than two decades of experience in the music industry, including 10 years working for Quincy Jones Entertainment (QJE) and Qwest Records. Originally from the Midwest and now based on the West Coast, Trish brings a deep appreciation for African American history and culture to her work, crafting stories that inform, inspire, uplift, and resonate with readers.

As a contributing writer and journalist for the Los Angeles Sentinel, ThyBlackMan, and ThySistas, Trish covers music, wellness, culture, and the stories that deserve to be told. Beyond writing, she embraces a wellness-focused lifestyle and curates soul-stirring playlists as a creative side venture. Above all, Trish lives a Christ-centered life, with her faith guiding her words and her work.

You can follow her on Instagram: trishsplaylist.

Feel free to reach out to her directly at: PTBrooks@ThyBlackMan.com.

So that’s where Brother Love lands today, 56 years old, serving a sentence of 50 months following convictions on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. A federal jury cleared Combs of the more serious racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking charges in July 2025. His attorneys are appealing both his conviction and sentence, but for now, the man who once seemed to have the entertainment world at his feet is living under federal prison rules.

Here’s the part that keeps a lot of us tangled up inside. Puff built something that mattered. Bad Boy Records bent the sound of a whole era. He put Biggie on. Beyond the music sat a fashion label, a vodka empire, award stages, magazine covers, the full mountain. A kid from a hard start climbed about as high as this country lets anybody climb. When a fall comes this steep, pride wants to flinch, loyalty wants to argue, and a piece of everybody who watched him rise feels the sting like it’s personal.

Feeling that sting, though, is not the same as waving off the wounds he left behind.

Let me put it plain. Achievement buys nobody a pass on how they treat people. Every dollar he ever counted could not cancel that hotel footage from 2016, the recording showing him physically assaulting Cassie Ventura in a hallway as she tried to escape. Nobody with working eyes watched that and called it love. Riches cannot rinse it clean. Talent cannot bury it. A closet packed with trophies cannot make a woman unafraid of the hands that struck her.

I came up around brothers who could do it all. They could fix an engine, feed a block, and make a room laugh till it ached. Yet a few of those very gifted souls walked through their own front doors and turned the house into a place of fear. Being great in one lane never undid the damage done in another. Our elders knew better than to hand somebody a halo just for being talented. Fame, somewhere down the line, talked plenty of folks out of that plain old wisdom.

This next stretch is where I want to move slow, because two separate things keep getting mashed into one lump.

Standing up for a person’s rights and defending his conduct are two different acts. They should never be confused. I’ll argue all day that Sean Combs deserved a fair trial and deserves an honest appeal, with due process that runs the same for Diddy as for anybody breathing. That principle matters deeply to Black Men, since the record shows how often our communities have faced unequal treatment within the justice system and how quickly our version of events can get dismissed. Honest courts, straight juries, punishment that fits the offense, I want every ounce of that guarded, for the famous and for the brother no reporter will ever name.

Twisting that fairness into cover for the harm itself is the move I refuse. Granting a person due process is one statement. Claiming Diddy did nothing wrong is a completely separate statement, and nobody should staple the two together. Both truths can ride at the same time. Protection under the law belongs to the man, and so does a real reckoning for what he did. Grown folks carry both without dropping either.

Some of the brothers reading this might push back. They’ll point out the cameras chased him harder on account of his color, that plenty of powerful figures do foul things and skate off clean. There are legitimate questions about whether wealth, influence, and race affect how people are investigated, prosecuted, and portrayed. I won’t pretend those concerns don’t exist. Even so, the cure for an unfair spotlight is not denying what the light exposed. If others walk, that’s an argument for more accountability across the board, not a discount for our own. Dropping the bar for the brothers we love does them no favor, and it does the people they hurt a quiet kind of cruelty.

Consider the message we hand the young ones when status gets to cover sin. We’d be teaching them that enough fame patches any crack, passing down a lie that says the aim is to grow so big nobody dares touch you, so rich the rules just bow. Follow that road to its end and you find a figure who held more talent and treasure than most of us will ever smell, and he’s sitting in Allenwood right now, with reports of contraband, disciplinary problems, and lost prison credits following him from one facility to another.

Strength was never about ducking the bill when it came due. Manhood, the kind our old heads tried to pour into us, meant answering for your actions whether a crowd clapped or not. Owning your wrong runs harder than earning a Grammy. Facing the ones you damaged takes more spine than selling out an arena. We shortchange the next generation every time we whisper that winning is the escape hatch from character.

So I’m holding two things in these hands this evening. There’s compassion for a human being serving his sentence, far removed from the freedom, comforts, and empire he once enjoyed. And there’s a flat refusal to call his harm by any softer name. Neither one erases the other.

Black Men get to be complicated in our judgment. Grieving the squandered gift and honoring the women who suffered can live side by side. We can defend the principle of fair treatment while making it clear that putting hands on somebody is wrong, regardless of fame or success. Nuance isn’t softness. It’s love with some grown years on it.

The ones coming up behind us are studying how we handle this moment. Let’s make certain they catch the right lesson. You can respect what a person is owed under the law without excusing his worst behavior. No amount of success ever places someone above the people he was supposed to love.

Staff Writer; Jamar Jackson

This brother loves poetry, music, and the culture that raised him… His words come from somewhere honest, and they speak to everyday Black folks just living their lives… Reach him at JJackson@ThyBlackMan.com.