That the budget nightmare currently plaguing the School District of Philadelphia was fully predictable does not make it any less devastating.

Long before he took office, then-candidate Corbett made no secret of his intention to slash public education, which has long been the Republican Party’s prime example of taxpayer-funded waste. Corbett cited as his hero neighboring freshman governor Chris Christie, who at that time was engaged in his own power struggle with schools, teachers and public employees in general.

In fact, when the new crop of GOP governors and state legislators sailed into office on the Red Tide of 2010, they all made pretty much the same moves: Vilify public employees, slash education and crush collective bargaining. From Wisconsin to Ohio to New Jersey, they’ve kept their promises — all while managing to keep millionaires and big corporations safe from taxes and regulations.

They told us what they would do if we allowed them to take office — then they did it. For that, the blame does not fall upon them, or even upon those who voted for them.

Blame falls upon those in the opposing party who, hearing those campaign promises and understanding the horrific consequences, stood by and watched it happen. If you’re a Democrat who failed to vote in the last election, that includes you.

And don’t give me the same old tired excuses, so hackneyed and shop worn the rest of us can recite them by heart: “It doesn’t matter if I vote. Those politicians are going to do what they want to do anyway.” Or: “It’s all a scam, and they’re all corrupt, so what difference does it make?” And my favorite, which will become especially frightening next November: “[insert candidate] is going to win anyway, so my one vote isn’t going to make a difference.”

These are self-fulfilling prophecies. If you don’t vote, then yes, the other side will win, and yes, they’re going to turn you upside down and shake you until the change falls from your pockets. They’re going to reward their friends and punish their enemies, and hammer an agenda you naively thought they’d never get away with.

So when Gov. Corbett announced the state’s newest budget this week, you had to have some idea of what to expect. It’s a lot like last year’s budget, with an extra kick to the ribs of poor people.

The slow dismantling of public education is not a new agenda item. It’s just that the GOP has been previously thwarted in their efforts by vigilant advocates —– whose voices are drowned out now that they’re outnumbered.

That too, is partly our own fault. We allowed the GOP to gain the high ground on the thorny issue of public education finances, which is the basis of their subsequent slash-and-burn budgets.

We stood idly by while cronies, insiders, political patrons and friends-of-friends benefited from contracts and services on the school district’s dime. We knew they were shady, and we knew they were essentially stealing money from classrooms and programs in desperate need. We cringed, but said nothing, whenever someone was caught with their hand in the cookie jar — even remaining silent while they inevitably produced crocodile tears and phony cries of “What about the children?” to silence critics.

Well, the chickens have come home to roost, and the fact is that those adults who have been gaming the system for personal profit for years don’t care any more about the children than the current crop of right wing hatchet men who are determined to gut public education. The school district was a cash cow, and we looked the other way while they milked her dry.

Believe it or not, though, there is still some good that may come out of all this.

Remember the look of sadness on those children’s faces when we tell them there’s no after school programs. Remember how art, music, sports and extracurricular activities enriched your own educational experience as you watch those programs wither and die.

Then use this as an example of what happens when we get complacent. This is our payback for not organizing well enough, for not getting out the vote when we should have, and for not sounding the alarm loud enough when we realized they were going to close more schools and build more prisons.

This coming November, and in the next statewide election, ask yourself whether public education is worth it, and vote accordingly. Do nothing, and…

Well, we’ve seen what happens when we do nothing.

Daryl Gale is the Philadelphia Tribune's city editor.

As the Republican National Convention moved into full swing, the Obama campaign swung through Pennsylvania this week — in a three-day bus tour — contrasting President Barack Obama to his challengers Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.

The bus, bulging with dignitaries — some of whom had ridden just a few blocks down Broad Street from the Union League at Broad and Sansom Street — rolled into town, the final stop on a statewide tour that started Monday in Erie.

Participants in the tour, dubbed, “Romney Economics Wrong for the Middle Class,” pummeled Romney and Ryan on their proposed economic policies.

“They do want to take America back,” Mayor Michael Nutter said, riffing on New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s convention speech. “Back to the failed economic policies that got us here in the first place.”

The tour, which travelled through Pittsburgh, Johnstown, State College and Scranton, among others, provided a diversion for Democrats during the Republican convention in Tampa, Fla., which has dominated the airways and news cycles all week, with numerous party bigwigs from Gov. Chris Christie to vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan criticizing the president for everything.

In his convention speech Wednesday night Ryan blasted the president and his economic policies.

“President Obama is the kind of politician who puts promises on the record, and then calls that the record,” said Ryan. “But we are four years into this presidency. The issue is not the economy as Barack Obama inherited it, not the economy as he envisions it, but this economy as we are living it.”

The city’s Democratic establishment hastened to disagree, charging that Republican policies would destroy the middle class.

“It’s Robin Hood in reverse,” said City Council Majority Leader Curtis Jones Jr., referring to Romney’s time as head of Bain Capital. “He steals from the poor to give to his rich friends. He would do the same thing in the White House.”

And though Philadelphia politicians made up the bulk of the group, two legislators from Massachusetts — who had travelled the length of Pennsylvania — spoke about Romney’s tenure as governor of their state.

“Romney economics didn’t work then, and it won’t work now,” said Massachusetts state Rep. Jeffery Sanchez, telling reporters that while Romney was governor of the state, 40,000 jobs were lost and the state fell to 47th in job creation.

“What has Mitt Romney ever built but million dollar bank accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands?” he asked.

The arrival of the bus was the culmination of several events in Philadelphia this week as the Obama campaign continued to hammer at the Romney–Ryan ticket.

A number of smaller but related events were held throughout the week, singling out specific topics for attack. For example, on Tuesday, actress Tatyana Ali, former star of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, appeared with Councilwoman Marian Tasco to urge women to vote for Obama.

Ali, the daughter of immigrants, dismissed remarks Ann Romney made at the convention talking about the struggles she and her husband had early in their marriage.

“I don’t think they have any idea what it takes to pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” Ali said.

Pennsylvania is a key state in the November 6 contest. Most polls show Obama leading Romney but it’s too early to tell if the convention will provide the usual upswing in poll numbers for the Romney ticket.

Christie, in his convention speech, dismissed the polls, saying Republicans would reverse the numbers.

“Real leaders don’t follow polls. Real leaders change polls,” he said. “That’s what we need to do now. Change polls through the power of our principles.”

The Republicans have outpaced Obama and the Democrats in the last three months of fund-raising. Since June, Obama has raised $75 million while the Republicans have hauled in more than $101 million.

Contact staff writer Eric Mayes at (215) 893-5742 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Some unwelcome news radiating from the long July 4th holiday involved a Philly teen shooting two other teens near the Parkway festivities and New Jersey’s governor shooting off his mouth — again.

Last Wednesday evening teen shooter, Nafis Scott, 16, of Germantown, reportedly got into a tiff in Center City resulting in his [allegedly] shooting a 17-year-old and a 19-year-old, both in the legs.

Scott fled the shooting but while fleeing Scott [allegedly] fired at pursuing police who shot him, taking him to a hospital under arrest.

A day later, N.J. Governor Chris Christie, while on a Jersey shore vacation, reacted angrily to a man criticizing his controversial educational policies with yet another angry-toned outburst that landed as a video on national television.

Christie’s latest verbal assault came days after he called a reporter an “idiot” for asking a question Christie didn’t like, a more than a week after Republican Christie called Democratic legislators “liars” and four months after Christie verbally drop-kicked an Iraq War vet for questioning a controversial college realignment plan Christie endorsed.

Christie is the same political bully who relishes receipt of conservative praise for his verbal beating-downs on female teachers who raise legitimate questions about his falsehood-filled postures on public education.

Typical of perversions rampant in today’s society this latest temper tantrum from Christie drew ever-more cheers in circles that routinely applaud his indignant political style while Scott rightfully received condemnation as out-of-control needing incarceration.

Yes, these perversions result in the bombastic N.J. Brawler and the [alleged] teen shooter eliciting different societal responses despite both exhibiting the same symptom: individuals unable to control themselves unleashing a hair-trigger contempt against anyone perceived as challenging them.

While there is no comparison between shooting someone with a gun and someone shooting off their mouth, there is no denying some impact on impressionable youth from seeing political officials like Christie exult in piggish behaviors.

Politicians, particularly conservatives like Christie, love to lecture teens (especially non-whites) about the need for talking things out instead of resorting to confrontations.

Yet, those same politicians see no duplicity in their publicly engaging in confrontations that ooze lack of civility — confrontations contributing to teens acting in similar ways.

American politicians love to act tough, particularly against the powerless and poor.

For the past three decades too many American politicians have fallen over each other in their rush to be tough by enacting stiff punishment for teens under the charge of holding kids strictly accountable for their actions.

That strict accountability standard interestingly is not applied to corporations that commit crimes, even crimes causing deaths.

America, for example, was the only nation on earth to sentence juveniles to life-without-parole prison terms for involvement in fatal offenses (even remote involvement) until late last month.

A few weeks ago the U.S. Supreme Court ended the outrage in over two dozen states and the federal system of burying teens in prison when it ruled that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juvenile offenders violated the U.S. Constitution’s ban against cruel and unusual punishment.

Given the pervasive race bias in America’s criminal justice system it’s not surprising that most of the 2,500-plus teen lifers in the U.S. are African-American.

In Pennsylvania — the state with the largest teen-lifer population — 70 percent of the juvenile lifers are African-American and nine percent are Hispanic.

The teens who politicians hold strictly accountable cannot even reason rationally according to scientific evidence about juvenile brain development now recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court that utilized that evidence when recently outlawing juvenile mandatory life without parole and previously outlawing juvenile life for non-homicides and the death penalty for juveniles.

Contrast this hard-line on teen crime with the soft-peddle given crimes committed by corporations.

Now when corporations want to overwhelm the electoral process with their enormous money conservatives want corporations legally considered as ‘persons.’

However, when corporations commit crimes those same conservatives contend real persons responsible for that corporate misconduct should not face personal responsibility for crimes.

Such soft-peddling on corporate crimes further perverts America’s bedrock principle of equal justice under law — the phrase written above the entrance to the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C.

This month federal authorities fined pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline a record $3 billion for breaking U.S. laws against promoting unapproved uses of certain drugs yet no executive behind that misconduct faced criminal prosecution.

Those highly paid Glaxo execs who escaped prison cells for their misconduct certainly received lavish bonuses from the $27.9 billion in combined corporate profits on three of the drugs at the center of the record fine.

To corporations, such fines (even large fines) amount to chump-change falling far short of profits from the misconduct.

Further, those fines get passed along as increased costs to consumers and taxpayers stuck with cleaning up messes from corporate misconduct.

Remember, corporations that often engage in misconduct, the large law firms that defend corporations and the lobbyists who convince politicians to protect corporate interests routinely permit gross employment discrimination within their ranks.

And that discrimination contributes to 14.4 percent Black unemployment rate for June 2012 — a rate nearly double America’s unemployment rate for whites.

Black teen unemployment last month reached nearly 40 percent according to federal figures without either party on Capitol Hill voicing alarm.

Problems with America’s young will persist as long as corporations and politicians like N.J.’s Christie engender applause for petulant behavior.

Linn Washington Jr. is a graduate of the Yale Law Fellowship Program.

Laverne Williams, 65, has seen a lot of crime in Camden in her day.

Gunshot wounds, muggings, rapes, burglaries. In Camden, such assaults on the sensibilities of residents are not unusual.

Yet Williams, born and raised in Camden, said last week that the worst crime would be to let the Camden County government take over the Camden City police department as state and county officials have pushed to do in recent weeks.

City and county officials, however, contend that unless control of the department is put in the hands of the county, patrolling the streets of Camden will be too expensive and crime and violence will continue to increase.

“Camden has been named the most dangerous city in the nation year after year,” said Camden County Freeholder Director Louis Cappelli Jr. in explaining the necessity for the takeover. “The status quo can no longer be tolerated.”

The bulk of Camden’s budget, in this predominantly Black and Hispanic 9-square-mile city of 80,000, is designated for police and public safety. Each year, the price tag on those items continues to swell, even after a state takeover of the city. And each year, Camden’s annual deficit has grown as well.

According to Cappelli, the new policing system would be a regional plan that would begin primarily by policing Camden, and would expand to other county municipalities on a voluntary basis. Similar regional plans have been implemented in other states, such as Maryland, Delaware and Virginia.

He said 30 years ago Camden County’s 911 went to a regional system and most municipalities have since joined.

But the battle over whether to convert to such a system continues to be waged, with residents such as Williams viewing the move as a political maneuver that will bring in more outsiders to fill Camden jobs.

Several weeks ago, citizens such as Eulisis Delgado, Vance Bowman, Larry Gilliams, Mary Cortes and Robert Davis — known as the Camden Five — tried to “Save the Camden Police Department” by attempting to use a petition drive to put an ordinance in place to block a county takeover.

The drive aimed to prohibit the disbanding of the city police department for a county-wide police department.

The Camden Five managed to obtain close to 5,000 signatures in a first failed drive, but the petition list was thrown out on a technicality.

The same group came back within three days, managing to obtain 2,800 signatures, with enough clout to get an ordinance on the Council agenda for May 8.

But that ordinance was withdrawn by Council after a last minute drive by Mayor Dana Redd and City Council President Frank Moran to block the petition drive through a temporary restraining order obtained through the Camden County Superior Court, which set a hearing date of June 11 for the issue to be discussed.

In the June 11 hearing, the courts will decide whether to fully block the ordinance, or schedule a referendum on July 11 to let voters decide up or down on the issue of the police takeover.

Williams, a longtime activist, told City Council last week that the worst crime would have been to “negate the will of the people,” take the city’s police department away from the residents, and put the department under the operation of the county.

“We’re losing our police department,” Williams said during Camden’s Council meeting last week. “For what? It’s the politicians. I’m sick and tired of it.”

Williams was referring to the fact that Mayor Redd and Councilman Moran have sided with the county in its bid to take over the city police.

Redd and Moran have said they are aligned with county and New Jersey Governor. Chris Christie in what they say is a bid to help “streamline” government to make it more efficient and save costs.

Those opposed, like FOP president John Williamson, say the reorganization and takeover of the Camden police department is nothing more than “union-busting” and that it would be bad for the public because experienced officers would be replaced with inexperienced ones on the streets.

The plan would disband the current department and call back potentially 49 percent of the current force. Hiring less than half of the original force would avoid the provisions of an expired contract, county officials said.

The effort to take over Camden’s police department began after police unions and the city failed to agree on negotiations and compromises in this impoverished city, which depends on the state to fill 70 percent of its budget.

The impasse contributed to the layoff of 168 officers — nearly half the department — in January of 2011. Some were rehired, but 80 to 90 officers have left the force for retirement and other reasons.

The plan would begin as a metro division that would police only Camden, thereby raising the number of officers on the street from the current 280 to around 400.

Camden regularly ranks among the nation’s highest-crime cities.

The plan, which has been under study for several months, could reduce costs while keeping salaries at current levels and making the department more effective.

Under an agreement with the state announced last August, the county has until Sept. 30 to submit a plan to the state Department of Community Affairs for reorganization.

Some officials say crime may be edging up as a result of layoffs already in place.

Camden County prosecutor Warren W. Faulk, in previous published reports, has said it is hard to pinpoint a cause and effect.

“We can’t make a direct connection between the layoffs and that increase,” Faulk said, “but those assaults give you the impression they feel emboldened that there is not a police officer around the corner, or within earshot.”

The layoffs of nearly half the department in Camden took place at a time when some said residents were beginning to feel safer. In the last two years, Camden recorded fewer than 40 murders, significantly less than the 54 murders of 2008, when the city was ranked the most dangerous in America, according to a widely quoted survey.

Then a $14 million deficit in the Police Department’s budget, combined with failed union negotiations, led to the layoffs, which left Camden with 204 police officers, its smallest department since 1949.

Forced to restructure the department after the layoffs, Chief Thomson demoted many of his senior officers to patrol duty. As other cities reckon with budget deficits and mounting pension costs, he says he believes his counterparts in other cities will find themselves working under the same constraints as he now does.

Local NAACP head Kelly Francis and former councilman Ali Sloan El, two of those spearheading the drive, argue that the move is merely an effort to tighten county machine control over the city.

“It’s all about power and control,” said Francis.

The police department has been under state control. Nonetheless, problems in the department have persisted.

According to Francis, “There are no figures [for the takeover]. No plans. The only plan is that they have to lay off 51 percent of the current officers to negate control of the union. It’s union busting. That way the contract will be null and void.”

John Williamson, president of Camden’s Fraternal Order of Police, the city’s largest police union, said no one on the current force has less than 12 years of experience.

“You’re going to take 12 years of experience in dealing with what we deal with and totally eliminate it to bring a new police force in,” Williamson said. “To me that’s turning Camden into an occupied territory.”

According to Francis, “The other 36 municipalities want no part of it.”

Though officials could not be reached before press time, officials in those other municipalities, according to recent reports, fear they will be left holding the bag in Camden, paying to police Camden while the number of officers patrolling their towns would shrink. County officials deny that would happen.

Normally diverging on just about every issue, there’s one topic President Barack Obama and conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh agree on: the Republican Party may implode if Obama wins reelection.

There was Limbaugh in September, sweating profusely and predicting the end of the world immediately following an Obama victory. But, he didn’t stop there, lambasting GOP standard-bearer Mitt Romney for “not running a conservative campaign.”

And it wasn’t just Romney. “There's gonna be a new Republican Party if that happens,” growled the red-faced commentator. Limbaugh believes that the “new GOP” is “… gonna be led by Tea Party people.”

“There's no ‘if’ about this. It's gonna be ugly, it's gonna be gut wrenching, but it will happen.” 

Two months later, while battling for re-election, President Obama chimed in on the subject, momentarily digressing from his campaign speech. "The question’s going to be: How do Republicans react post-election? Because there’s going to be a war going on inside that party. It just hasn’t broken up. It’s been unified in its opposition to me."

Each statement, and the tension in between, seems to validate the other on the surface. Limbaugh may have been channeling Tea Party rank-and-file frustration at the time, a need to openly whine about a deliberate and carefully orchestrated isolation game played by “Establishment Republicans” during their convention in Tampa, Fla. Many Tea Party faithful were telling the Tribune at the time that they knew what was up, didn’t appreciate it and would find some way to make those responsible pay. Many pointed to “country club” GOP icons like Crossroads GPS Super PAC king Karl Rove as a culprit. Rove, not mincing words over his clear distaste for upstarts like Sarah Palin — and others like Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin who wore down the GOP brand, seemed impervious to the threats while raising loads of money.

Yet, other GOP insiders are clearly trembling at the thought of a party in disarray, unlike anything seen since its founding in 1854. At that time, it was a fragmented coalition of Whigs, Democrats, Free Soilers and Know Nothings.

Some predict a similar situation in the event President Obama, a reviled and supremely hated target of the ideological right, gets his second term.

“There are a number of Republicans who are not and have not been happy with the Republican Party for a while,” said Timothy F. Johnson, founder of the Frederick Douglass Foundation, and a former vice chair of the North Carolina Republican Party. Talking to the Tribune, Johnson predicted an implosion within the party when either candidate wins the White House. “[Black Republican conservatives] are tired of having to speak for candidates who are unwilling to go into our communities or speak directly to the citizens. And while the overall objective of this election cycles is to remove President Obama from office, repeal Obamacare and get the economy back on track, regardless of who is elected there will be a revolt.”

Of course, it’s not just Black Republicans. Polls have remained tight for some time, and Republican strategists seem to have a nervous edge about them. Early voting returns favor the president, prompting Romney to recalibrate. Worried about a loss of advantage in critical battleground states like Ohio and Florida, Team Romney shifts to battle Team Obama on its left flank, engaging in an expanded map strategy as resources are being dumped into last minute campaign ad barrages in light blue states like Pennsylvania and Minnesota.

Many experts agree that there is a rising fear among poll-number crunching Republicans that Obama could win. A recent endorsement of the president from the traditionally right-leaning and pro-big business magazine The Economist jarred many conservatives into disbelief. That was in the wake of a surprise endorsement from former-Republican-turned-centrist-independent Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who suddenly became an Obama fan after what was perceived as an effective federal emergency response to Superstorm Sandy’s devastation.

And there was widespread disbelief from partisans on both sides of the aisle when an emotional New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie openly bear-hugged the president in multiple press conferences and interviews for his “personal attention” to the Sandy destruction on the Jersey shore. That was only days following a loud Christie on the pro-Romney trail blasting Obama as clueless and inept.

Still, Republican strategist and Potomac Strategy Group CEO Matt Mackowiak appears cautious on the GOP-implosion scenario. While conventional wisdom will blame conservatives, “the loss will not be seen as a rebuke to conservatism,” Mackowiak says, “but rather to a moderate candidate.” 

“Party elders will seek to solve the immigration issue within the party, to ensure we not continue to lose such a large percentage of the growing Hispanic population.  More broadly, the effect of a grand bargain, which could include tax increases, will threaten to split the party, but also potentially allow space for a true conservative candidate to be our nominee in 2016,” Mackowiak adds.

“Parties that lose back-to-back presidential elections often go through a period of change,” says former 2008 Obama co-chair and Colorado Senate President Peter Groff, who believes it won’t be as bad for the GOP as it seems. “The Democrats went more moderate after losing twice to Ronald Reagan and built the Democratic Leadership Council and ‘created’ Bill Clinton and leaned more left after going down twice to George W. Bush. So it makes perfect sense that the GOP will look inward after back-to-back wins by President Obama.” 

“I don't buy the fact the party will be ‘ripped apart’ by the internal conversation, political parties are living entities and morph and change to better reflect their principals in modern times,” said Groff.

Washington Times columnist Jeneba Ghatt rejects the notion of an implosion, but definitely sees a need for change within the GOP in terms of demographics. “I’ve been under the presumption that if Barack Obama is re-elected, the Establishment Republicans would perhaps regain the reigns of their party, having realized that pandering to the extreme is a losing game.”

Too many U.S. citizens dismiss Black History Month as if it were graffiti defacing America’s vaulted wall of greatness soiling this nation stature of championing equal opportunity for all.

For too many, the annual February celebration of Black History Month is unnecessary…a nuisance that needs elimination…especially since the election of Barack Obama as the nation’s first non-white President which many consider America’s giant step into a ‘post-racial’ era.

However, recent remarks by Republicans from NJ Governor Chris Christie to that party’s presidential contenders graphically dramatize both willful ignorance and callous indifference that actually amplifies the need for more not less illumination about Black History.

Those remarks evidence disturbing yet widespread misunderstandings about the real history of America and the experiences of all races now inhabiting this land snatched away from its original inhabitants: Native Americans.

NJ’s caustic conservative governor Christie, when recently proclaiming his desire for a public referendum on same sex marriage instead of legislative implementation, claimed civil rights activists in America’s once apartheid South would have favored public referendums to gain their legal rights instead of public protests.

Black leaders in NJ and across America quickly checked Christie’s flawed history pointing out that [white] public sentiment in pre-1970s America generally opposed equal rights for non-whites and racist violence across the South stopped blacks from voting thus blocking their participation in any referendums on their rights.

Gov. Christie “obviously has little understanding of American history and the depths to which our nation went to preserve white supremacy,” stated Walter Fields in a recent commentary.

Fields, the former political director for the NJ NAACP, called upon Christie to act honorably by making a “real commitment toward teaching African-American history in New Jersey public schools.”

NJ, the last northern state to outlaw slavery and a state that didn’t get a black prosecutor in its city with the state’s largest black population until 1986, was America’s first state to implement statewide enforcement of non-discrimination in public accommodations.

That NJ law – approved in 1949 by the state legislature not public referendum – enabled Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., then a seminary student, to file his first lawsuit against race discrimination.

King filed that lawsuit in 1950 after a gun waving bigot chased King and three companions from the bar he owned in Maple Shade, NJ – a suburb of Philadelphia.

GOP presidential contender Newt Gingrich, employing Chris Christie-like bluster, has sought to boost his sputtering campaign by appealing to potential white voters through tarring blacks.

Gingrich, while campaigning in Iowa, oozed slime about blacks wanting food stamps more than jobs. Gingrich exploited that factually inaccurate food stamp assertion while campaigning in South Carolina – a state where the Confederate flag still flies on the state Capitol grounds.

Iowa is a state with a 12.6-percent poverty rate and a state where blacks comprise just five percent of the population.

Given the fact that simple math calculations show Iowa with more poor whites than blacks of all income levels Gingrich tagging poverty as a black problem is not a mistake but calculated race-baiting by a malicious man who styles himself a scholar because he holds a PhD.

Given the fact that many politicians and powerful business leaders have historically manipulated raw racism to divert focus from economic inequities the perplexing issue that arises again-&-again is why do so many whites constantly fall for this Okie-Doke?

During the 1890s for example, when many poor whites began seeing similarities with blacks in their common impoverishment, America’s rulers ramped up legalized Jim Crow segregation convincing whites that petty privileges like separate toilets and water fountains improved their lives more than better pay and working conditions.

One year before the U.S. Supreme Court sanctioned legalized segregation in the infamous 1896 separate-but-equal Plessy ruling that same all-white/all-male court issued its equally infamous In Re Debs ruling that undermined the ability of workers to form unions – a ruling impacting whites more than blacks.

During the past 40-years middle class, low income and poor whites have gravitated to the Republican Party seduced by often overt appeals to subliminal racism and that tantalizing siren-song of unlimited upward mobility in American society – mobility that conservatives falsely proclaimed minorities sought to marginalize through efforts to undo institutional racism like affirmative action.

The reality overlooked by many whites during that 40-year span was the GOP intensifying its actions of enriching the rich with tax breaks, deregulation and other special benefits bestowed by government manipulations.

Federal census figures show that salaries for average male workers in America rose by just $165 between 1972 and 2010 – during a time when GOP ‘trickle-down economics’ facilitated an enormous flow of wealth up to the top-rungs of America’s economic ladder.

Enrichment schemes pushed by the Republican Party giving special breaks to America’s financial sector facilitated the ability of GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney to amass his personal fortune in excess of $200-million by heading a firm that killed jobs through closing companies and selling off assets.

Many of those voting Republican in the 2010 anti-Obama uprising didn’t bargain on niggardly, mean-spirited mistreatment from the likes of Pa Gov. Corbett (gutting public education funding) and Wisconsin Gov. Walker (attacking union rights).

Expanding information about Black History facts will not cure America’s deep-seated ‘race problems’ but reducing such information will surely make those problems worse.

Linn Washington Jr. is a graduate of the Yale Law Journalism Fellowship Program.

NEWARK, N.J. — In a smoky stairwell, with embers falling from the ceiling and his neighbor slung over his shoulder, Cory Booker called it his "proverbial come to Jesus moment."

The mayor of New Jersey's largest city was carrying out a constituent he had rushed into a burning home to save, first pushing aside security detail who tried to hold him back by his belt. He didn't feel like a hero: "I felt terror," he told reporters on Friday, speaking with a burned, bandaged right hand.

The 42-year-old mayor, who has dug out snowbound residents in a blizzard, lived in a rundown housing project to make a point and tagged along on police patrols to lecture drug dealers, took on a new status Friday: the politician who can do almost anything.

Thousands took to Twitter, calling Booker Superman and inviting him to solve the North Korean missile crisis or run for president. The governor called it a "brave move" and the fire director said the mayor was one of the most heroic men he'd ever met.

Booker, standing in front of the boarded-up home Friday, said, "I did what any neighbor would do — help a neighbor."

He ended up with second-degree burns and smoke inhalation after he brought out Zina Hodge, 47, from her smoky bedroom in the home next to his in a rough neighborhood of brick homes, storefront churches and small bodegas. He was coughing heavily after the rescue late Thursday.

Booker rushed into the burning home shortly after returning from taping a television appearance on Thursday, after Hodge's mother screamed that her daughter was trapped. Following her faint calls of; "I'm here, I'm here. Help! I'm here," Booker lifted her from her bed and carried her on his shoulders through the burning kitchen, where flames had rolled over the roof and back down the wall.

He nearly panicked in the stairwell, where Newark Det. Alex Rodriguez was helping him bring Hodge out. He couldn't see through the smoke.

"That was the moment I had a conversation with God," Booker said. "I really didn't think we were going to get out of there."

Hodge was listed in serious condition Friday in the intensive-care unit of the burn center at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston. Fire officials said she had suffered second-degree burns to her back and neck and smoke inhalation.

Hodge's mother, Jacqualine Williams, called the second-term mayor "a super mayor" who should become president.

Booker — a former All-American football player at Stanford — downplayed his actions and said he's no hero.

"I didn't feel bravery, I felt terror," he said. "I couldn't breathe. It was a moment I felt very religious, let me put it that way."

Even critics of the mayor, some who refer to him as "Story Booker" for what they call a history of courting publicity to boost his national image while ignoring problems in the impoverished city, offered grudging praise.

"I commend the mayor for what he's done, but the people in this city need jobs," said Joanne Miller, who lives in Booker's neighborhood. "That's the real kind of hero we need in this city."

As mayor, Booker has been known to ride along with police on late-night patrols, once even chasing down a robbery suspect. The Peabody award-winning Sundance Channel series "Brick City" documented his efforts to decrease the city's crime rate and tackle ongoing financial problems. Profiles have appeared in Time magazine and Esquire. He's even shoveled out resident's cars during a blizzard that snarled his city and the rest of the Northeast in 2010.

As a city councilman, he spent months living in a trailer parked on some of the city's most drug-infested corners, and publicly fasted for 10 days outside a violent housing project. He lived in another tenement for years to call attention to blight; it has since been shut down.

Booker, who has attracted names like Oprah Winfrey and the $100 million donation to schools of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, has brushed off rumors that he has his eye on higher office. But he set up a federal political action committee, fueling speculation that he might run for governor or the U.S. Senate.

When the mayor arrived at his neighborhood on Thursday, two members of his security detail had already taken several members of the family from the home; Williams was screaming that her daughter was still inside.

The officers tried to keep him from going, but Booker, who is 6-foot-3, and a former All-American tight end from Stanford, was no match for Rodriguez, who is trained to protect him, not fight him.

"It wasn't easy trying to hold him by the belt," Rodriguez, who is considerably shorter and slimmer than Booker. "He was insisting, 'If I don't go in there, this lady is going to die.'"

Rodriguez helped Booker take Hodge down the smoky stairwell and out. Then, "we both just collapsed," the mayor said.

"I had my proverbial come-to-Jesus moment in my life," he said.

Hodge and the mayor were apparently burned as embers fell from the apartment ceiling while Booker was carrying her. The officials said the fire likely started in the kitchen.

A prolific social media user, Booker tweeted late Thursday and early Friday that he was fine and thanked his followers for their well-wishes. "I will b ok," he wrote.

The Twitter-sphere was blowing up Friday with thousands of tweets from Booker's million-plus Twitter followers about the rescue. Hundreds of tweets were being posted every few minutes throughout the day Friday on (hash)CoryBookerStories, one of several new hashtags created to celebrate Booker's heroics. Even Gov. Chris Christie tweeted, wishing Booker a speedy recovery and adding; "Brave move, Mr. Mayor."

Booker himself tweeted that he seen the hashtag, but cautioned: "Grateful to (hash)CoryBookerStories 4 bringing smiles, fire safety, however, is a serious matter," and linked to tips on the U.S. Fire Administration's website.

"I really feel thankful to God," he said on Friday. "I feel a sense of gratitude today, to God, that I'm here." -- (AP)

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — New Jersey officials say a wide-ranging effort to improve Atlantic City is starting to pay off, from new private investment in non-casino attractions to a $20 million advertising campaign that's beginning to change negative perceptions about the seaside gambling resort.

Former President Bill Clinton adopted a mend-it-don’t-end-it posture toward affirmative action in 1995, refusing to placate white conservatives at war with this equity initiative even if it cost him votes.

According to an alarming column by National Black Chamber of Commerce president/CEO Harry Alford published in The Philadelphia Tribune recently, the affirmative action posture of America’s first president of clear African ancestry apparently is: pretend-it-to-end-it.

Alford says federal contracting with Black-owned firms experienced drastic reductions during the Obama years and now “instead of exhausting all avenues to improve the amount of Black contracting, this administration is taking formal action to end all” minority contracting initiatives.

Although Alford didn’t say it, Obama backing away from fighting for affirmative action is yet another instance of this president’s placate-enemies approach to governance that again leave the interests of his core Black constituency out in the cold.

Apparently this oft-described constitutional law scholar and his supporting cast of Ivy League trained lawyers lack commitment or lack savvy for crafting legal arguments to counter conservative attacks against affirmative action righting historic wrongs.

Independently vetted federal statistics confirm Alford’s contention.

Black-owned businesses have received a paltry 3.5 percent of federal contracts funded through Obama’s vaulted ARRA stimulus approved in 2009, according to continuous stimulus monitoring conducted by the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University.

Further, stimulus contracts sprinkled to Black and Latino firms had low dollar values.

The specific Obama administration initiative igniting Alford’s ire is a proposed policy to eliminate a program establishing a five percent minority-owned small business federal contracting goal for the Department of Defense, NASA and the U.S. Coast Guard.

Alford’s column quoted Lloyd Chapman, president of the American Small Business League, who sees “significant negative” economic impacts on minority-owned small businesses leading to the loss of millions of jobs from this policy shift by the Obama administration.

Chapman wrote it is “difficult to understand why, in the middle of one of the worst economic downturns in U.S. history and when unemployment has hit minority communities especially hard, the Obama administration would end one of the most successful programs to create jobs for minorities.”

On one level Obama has kept a campaign pledge to enact “change” … although this is not the “change” Obama’s solid supporters in the black community envisioned — their “President” killing programs that provided minority owned business with a few crumbs of fairness from the federal economic pie.

It’s easy to forget the noxious fact that duplicity is seemingly an integral element penned in invisible ink into job descriptions for elected office.

Yep, while there’s a short supply of jobs and mortgage foreclosure assistance for those suffering rapes by the forces manipulating America’s economic system apparently there’s no shortage of duplicity among politicians.

Look at the duplicity exhibited by chest-thumping “tough-on-crime” Republicans and Democrats in Pennsylvania’s legislature ignoring repeated requests from the Human Rights Coalition/Fed-Up! and other groups to investigate rampant abuses in the state’s prison system committed by guards.

Those physical/sexual abuses are crimes plus those abuses pick the public pocket because a significant percentage of Pennsylvania’s nearly $2-billion annual prison budget pays prison personnel salaries and benefits.

According to a recent HRC/Fed-Up! statement “While state prisoners in Pennsylvania are being physically, sexually and psychologically abused … the legislature has approved funding for three more prisons … At a time when other states are scaling back their prison populations for public safety and budgetary reasons …”

A vying volume of bi-partisan competitors makes topping the duplicity pile difficult but on the trash heap of ideological intransigence the policies/postures of N.J. Gov. Chris Christie constantly place him in win-place-or-show positions.

Christie’s refusal to appoint non-whites to NJ’s State Supreme Court draws rightful criticisms.

Christie sacked the state’s only Black Supreme Court justice refusing to reappoint John Wallace when his term expired early last year making Republican Governor Christie the first governor in N.J. memory not to reappoint a sitting high court justice.

Christie nominated a female GOP-operative corporate lawyer with no judicial experience to replace Wallace — a nomination held-up by N.J. Democratic Senators.

The state’s only Hispanic justice — Roberto Rivera-Soto — declined reappointment when his term expired last month.

Adding insult to his injurious judicial policies, when N.J.’s body that recommends judges objected to Christie’s mistreatment of Wallace the bombastic Governor replaced that body with all whites/all Republicans.

Christie new crew included a disgraced former Supreme Court Justice who while serving as N.J.’s Attorney General protected racial profiling by State Police and lied about it during legislative testimony.

Christie, countering criticisms of his seeming segregationist posture on Supreme Court nominees, contends that he has an “obligation to put the very best people on the court…”

That “very-best” contention by Christie rubs dung in the face of non-white Republicans because implicit in that posture is an assertion that non-white conservatives lack enough legal smarts to serve on the state Supreme Court Christie desires.

For a supreme example of duplicity (with emphasis on the deceitfulness element of that word’s definition) look no further than extreme conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas who recently celebrated twenty controversial years on America’s highest court.

Democratic Congress members and others demand an investigation into Thomas failing to disclose $1.6 million in earning his wife received from right-wing organizations pushing policies Thomas backs in court rulings.

Linn Washington Jr. is a graduate of the Yale Law Journalism Fellowship Program.

TRENTON, N.J. — Groups representing minorities in New Jersey have appealed to Gov. Chris Christie to make the state Supreme Court more diverse.

The Legislative Black Caucus sent a letter this month urging Christie to use his next appointment to nominate a minority. The NAACP, Latino Action Network and others wrote to Senate lawmakers in September asking that they approve only nominees who increase the court's diversity and independence.

Christie, a Republican, will make two nominations to the court in March.

The current court is made up of five women and two men, all of whom are white.

Blacks, Latinos and Asians make up more than 40 percent of the state's population.

"The court should reflect the diversity of the citizenry of the state," said Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver, a Black Democrat and a member of the group that sent the letter. "I know the governor is very proud of the gender representation on the court. We also have to have racial and ethnic diversity."

Assemblywoman Bonnie Watson Coleman, also a Black Democrat and a member of the group, said New Jersey courts have long been respected around the country for diversity, fairness and independence and that the governor had put that reputation at risk by allowing the Supreme Court to convene without any minority representation.

"Nominees must be a reflection of our population," she said.

Christie did not reappoint the court's last Black justice and nominated a white woman to fill a vacancy when the court's only Hispanic resigned.

Christie said in May he would be mindful of minority concerns when making his next appointments.

"We have an obligation to put the very best people on the court and to have a court that represents all of the interests of the people of New Jersey," Christie said at the time. "Certainly that's something I'll be mindful of as I consider nominees for those two seats."

His spokesman, Michael Drewniak, said Thursday he had nothing new to add.

The high court had been integrated since 1994, when the first Black justice, James Coleman Jr., took his seat, Judiciary spokeswoman Winnie Comfort said. Coleman was followed by John Wallace in 2003. The only Hispanic justice, Roberto Rivera-Soto, finished a seven-year term in September and declined to seek reappointment.

The struggle over the composition of the court began about 18 months ago when Christie became the first governor in memory not to reappoint a sitting justice for tenure. His action — which he said he took to reshape a bench he viewed as too activist — left the highest court without a Black representative for the first time in 16 years.

Infuriated Democrats refused to consider Christie's nominee, corporate lawyer Anne Patterson, for more than a year. Senate President Stephen Sweeney and Christie eventually brokered a deal to move Patterson's nomination — as a successor to Rivera-Soto, who had decided not to seek tenure on the court. Meanwhile, Democrats vowed to keep Wallace's seat vacant until March, when the jurist would have reached the mandatory retirement age of 70.

Justice Virginia Long will also reach age 70 in March.

Jerome Harris, who heads the state's Black Issues Convention, said the issue of judicial diversity was being closely watched, especially because big court issues such as affordable housing, public school funding and racial profiling can have dramatic effects on minority communities.

"Maintaining diversity on the court contributes to its independence," he said, noting the available pool of qualified minority lawyers seeking judgeships. "Under no circumstances are we suggesting that the quality of the appointments be diminished to achieve diversity." -- (AP)