Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Black athletes going broke, as usual

"No one can say with any degree of either logic or sanity, "I am going to deal drugs for a few years to earn money for college and then, after college, get a good job and raise a family." Even the strippers - who, often, claim to be putting themselves through college, by dancing up and down a pole - make more sense than that."

Dear friends,

Historically, African Americans have a poor sense of how to spend our money. Only the wealthy in this country are taught about wealth. The rest of the citizens (many European Americans included) have little or no idea of even what wealth is let alone how to either acquire or keep it. Unfortunately, with this, African Americans have been the worst. And even worse than that is the fact that just as we are beginning to gain some sense of the possibilities of saving, investing, acquiring property, and so forth, the train has just about left the station.


It used to be that if a person invested in an IRA from the time they were 19 until they were 25, they could see that grow into enough to retire on even if they never invested another cent. Now, with interest rates so low in banks and investments so "iffy", you have to keep investing, certainly, much longer, to make it worthwhile.

Additionally, the question then arises, how do African Americans tend to spend money anyway, when they are 19-25 years old much less younger than that? It is then, perhaps, more meaningful to develop as a standard that all youth are expected to have a college fund started by the time they enter Middle School. It may start out small, but it is the continual growth that makes a difference.

Imagine for example in 6 years, from 7th-12th grade, a students saves $5 per week-the first year, $10 /wk-the second year, $15/wk-the third year, and so forth. Even without interest, that student will have a substantial chunk of money with which to enter college.

The real benefit is developing a mentality that puts planning for the future and the assumption that We are all college bound, in the forefront. People who realize that they have a future may be less likely to squander it with petty and larcenous thinking like drug-dealing.

While we are on the subject, the worst thing about the drug-dealing mentality is that drug-dealing has no future and people who are involved in it have no vision of the future. No one can say with any degree of either logic or sanity, "I am going to deal drugs for a few years to earn money for college and then, after college, get a good job and raise a family." Even the strippers - who, often, claim to be putting themselves through college, by dancing up and down a pole - make more sense than that. (That is, at least, their profession is legal and has a fair amount of history to it.)

Now, what happens to the money, if the student does not go to college? Let it be available to the student when he or she is ready. It may go towards tuition in a trade school. It may be usable as downpayment on property. It should not be available as cash or to buy a car or pay rent. The point is that it is about moving the person forward. 

G. Djata Bumpus

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Ahmadinejad is NOT "all lies", as Romney and Obama woukl have us think




Dera friends,

The constant reference to Iran, by American politicians and Zionists alike, about the Islamic Republic's intentions to start a nuclear arms and/or war race ignores the role of the US and Israel in the old game of "the pot calling the kettle black". Please check out the link below.

One Love!

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/169514.html
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Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Education and disturbing Job ads (originally posted 5/10/10)

The other day, I saw a post on a friend's Facebook page that, at least to me, pointed out a real contradiction between the cries of many politicians for ‘education reform’ and ‘employment opportunities’. “

Dear friends,

The other day, I saw a post on a friend's Facebook page that, at least to me, pointed out a real contradiction between the cries of many politicians for “education reform” and “employment opportunities”.

The article was about employment ads that, basically, state: unemployed applicants will not be considered.

In other words, many employers are telling people who are out of work, for whatever reasons, that folks who are unemployed need not bother applying for the aforementioned employers’ jobs.

Now, actually, it had always been my experience that employers normally hire those who already have a job anyway. Therefore, I didn't understand why folks, including the author of the article, were so shocked about a practice that has always existed.

At any rate, apparently, in these Tea Party days, employers have "come out of the closet", as it were, and are stating publicly, “Get lost!” to millions of people.

Nevertheless, with all of the phony talk and legislation about
“No child left behind", isn't it funny that, for example, young people who have diligently gone and gotten their education, in hopes of contributing to the commonweal and being compensated for it, so that they can continue to share their skills with the rest of society, are locked out from the git-go? In other words, what’s the point of pretentious laws and statutes like the under-funded "No child left behind", if eager job applicants are discriminated against when they try to get opportunities to reveal the inner, personal powers that they enhanced through their education?

Yet, interestingly enough, the same politicians who say that they want "education reform" are happy to see these spurned job-seekers just mentioned go to war and defend the property rights of these pols’ sponsors (multi-national corporations and other big businesses). Also, you can bet on it that those same discriminating employers second the motion by politicians that young people be fodder for both the politicians' and corporations' benefit. Go figure.

Please check out the article on the link below.

Cheers!

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/04/disturbing-job-ads-the-un_n_600665.html?ref=fb&src=sp#sb=997897,b=facebook
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Monday, October 22, 2012

Libya's and the West's crooked governments alike released prisoners (originally posted March 23, 2011)

“BP faced a new outcry Thursday about whether the Scottish and British governments sought to smooth BP's oil exploration contract talks with Libya by releasing prisoners, including the man convicted of bombing the Pan Am plane that went down over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. The bombing killed 270 people, including 189 Americans..” - Steven Mufson, Washington Post, July 16, 2010

Dear friends,

The chaos that is going on right now in Libya is directly tied to the greed of the major Western governments, including the US and Israel (for whom the US continues to fight as a proxy), and their multinational corporate sponsors, along with the Khadafy regime. Exacerbating the whole mess is the release of prisoners, often murderers and drug thugs, by the Libyan government to undermine any genuine protest that may be occuring there.

To be sure, that practice of using criminals as cannon fodder is hardly either new or unfamiliar to Western powers especially. For example, about British settlements like the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Charlotte M. Waters wrote, "The colonies were used too as dumping ground for prisoners and undesirables generally, in spite of protests from the colonists. Criminals, prisoners of war, and inconvenient Irish were thus got rid of. Royalist prisoners after Worcester shared the fate with 2,000 Irish girls and boys deported by order of the Government. Kidnapping was not uncommon. Such emigrants were sold by auction..." (Waters, An Economic History of England).


Only a couple of years ago, British Petroleum (BP...remember them?)needed to cut a deal with the Libya government, regarding oil exploration opportunities. Part of the bargain was for the oil giant to obtain the release of one of Libya’s heroes, a man who had been convicted and was serving a life sentence for the air plane bombing over Lockerbee Scotland that killed almost 300 people, mostly Americans. Forget about the “War on Terror”. Business is business. Right? Right.

But where were all of the loudmouth right-wingers who love to boast about their unmatchable “patriotism” all of the time? Apparently, they all caught laryngitis together. In the Washington Post just last year (7/16/10), in an article called “Libyan controversy adds to BP's woes”, staff writer Steven Mufson reported: BP faced a new outcry Thursday about whether the Scottish and British governments sought to smooth BP's oil exploration contract talks with Libya by releasing prisoners, including the man convicted of bombing the Pan Am plane that went down over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. The bombing killed 270 people, including 189 Americans.

Additionally, quoting a confidential source, Mufson went on to say how the Obama administration fit in with all of this: The Libya deal was done with the full blessing of the U.S. government, said the source, who sought anonymity to preserve his business relationships. There was always a policy of no surprises with the U.S. government.


The released murderers and drug thugs who were mentioned earlier have no plans for doing anything but what they have been known to do. They wouldn’t be interested in creating a civil society, even if they knew how to. Anarchy – not the Khadafy regime or the Western governments and their corporate sponsors - rules in Libya right now. That makes perfect sense. After all, this is about greed. And as I’ve said so many times before, greed is always bad, because greed is always short-sighted, from the cheating spouse to BP, the nuclear power plant owners, and so many other “free market” and “free enterprise” hooligans. As our dear brother Macolm X insisted: The guys runnin’ this place ain’t nothin’ but Jesse James, Frank James, and the Whatchumacallit brothers.

G. Djata Bumpus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXSCLIlh17o
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Sunday, October 21, 2012

Five Questions that President Obama and Mitt Romney will not be asked


Five Questions that President Obama and Mitt Romney will not be asked

1) If there are only a finite number of citizens and, therefore, consumers in America, will there come a time when some American companies will reach their “saturation points” as it is called in “Economics”; that is, will they be unable to do business here?

2) Should the government “bailout” such companies, including banks, when they reach their aforementioned “saturation points”, since their profits will decline?

3) Do companies have a responsibility to produce results in order to keep themselves in business?

4) Does it seem reasonable for UAW and Teamsters members to take over the Big Three, since they are already building and distributing the cars, while being supported by government funds as opposed to helping the same corporate managers who caused the failure from the outset?

5) The United States is, after many years, still one of the only advanced nations that has yet to sign the International E.R.A. (Equal Rights Amendment) Treaty, will your administration sign that document soon?


G. Djata Bumpus
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Tired of folks complaining about Obama? (originally posted August 30, 2010)



Dr. Cornel West - in video, and premier journalist Annette John-Hall - in print, share two different, but very Black, views about President Obama's performance thus far.



http://www.businessian.com/cornel-west-obama-is-for-big-business-not-the-jobless-42667.html



http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/20100813_Annette_John-Hall__Tired_of_all_the_bickering_over_Obama_s_policies.html
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