Beating A Dead Horse

      Just say you are a conservative and you open yourself up to much attacks on your ideas and views.  I am contrary to most of my family and friends on the subject of political standings.  Standing on the right and not on a fence or in the yard of the left I am constant brought to task.  
      Standing on the right I feel it is only right to stand for the ideas we all believe in but won’t verbalize because of fear of ostracizing someone else.  I also believe that it is only right to speak the truth even if it is not right for others.  I am not a card carrying hack that only speaks the party line in defense of my party or my party leaders.  
      President Bush stated he will take responsibility but did not state he was wrong in the lack of proactive response to the people in the line of fire of Katrina.  This is not right.  If it is true that he is a simple figure head that never watches television and only relays on his people to inform him on coming events and situations then as a puppet he was not wrong just the wrong string was pulled.
      The woman governor of Louisiana whose her people that were most affected was the poor women of her state was not right in blaming the government and playing power struggles rather than getting her people out of danger.  The Black Mayor of New Orleans whose poor Black people were plastered on the televisions around the world as looters and pathetic poor was not right in not being proactive in getting his people out of the way.  
      Maybe I am guilty of beating the dead horse of blame.  I now think the right thing to do is to have us follow the money.  This, the greatest and richest country in the world continues to be divisive in regards to economics now rather than race.  A book by Martin Gilens, “Why Americans Hate Welfare,” argues that news organizations have racialized poverty (65% of poor Americans shown on TV are black, while only 29% of poor actually are black).  Furthermore a CBS poll revealed that 55% of Americans believe most welfare recipients are black when in reality most poor people and welfare recipients are white.  
          
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       In 1982, Von Bülow stood trial for the attempted murder of his wife Sunny at their estate, Clarendon Court, in Newport, Rhode Island. At the trial in Newport, Von Bülow was found guilty and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Claus appealed, hiring famous Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz to represent him. Dershowitz and his team of attorneys managed to cast serious doubts on some of the most damning evidence and witness testimony presented in the first trial, and the conviction was reversed in 1984. At a second trial in 1985, a jury found Claus not guilty on all charges. OJ Simpson a man who became the most famous criminal defendant in American history and so easily recognizable that people referred to him by his initials only. It went on for nine months. There were 11 lawyers including Dershowitz, representing the man in the dock and 25 working around the clock for the largest prosecutor's office in the country.  It became the most publicized case in US history. It was the longest trial ever held in California, costing over $20 million to fight and defend, running up 50,000 pages of trial transcript in the process. There were 150 witnesses called to give evidence before a jury that was sequestered at the Hotel Intercontinental in downtown L.A. from January until October.  Money found both not guilty.  Whether guilty or innocent we may never know but one thing is clear you and I would be in jail because we haven’t the monies these men have.  


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      Two men, both who denied a woman the right to say no.  Two men who had money to back their trials and two men whose trial captured the view of the world.  Money was the key factor to us being interested in the cases however all to money in the world would not take the place of a proper defense.  Kennedy Smith came to court and portrayed himself as an innocent soul while Tyson stood before a woman judge and declared he was a known sex pervert.  Dershowitz magic didn’t work in this case but he did get paid.


         
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      Millions were spent to defend four men and the result was that only one served time in jail.  Our priorities are in the wrong place.  Starbucks has made a $5 billion annual business by transforming coffee from a 50-cent daily staple into a $3 treat.  A gallon of Café de boue would cost twenty eight dollars and yet we complain about how much a gallon of gas cost.  

      We the people of the United States should think it is right to prioritize the use of our monies.  We should look carefully where the money goes.  We had a tax surplus and President Bush and our government turned that surplus into trillions of dollars of a deficit from a war we still don’t know why we are fighting.  From an attack on our land from someone we still know not who and now from a hurricane which we knew was coming.  It’s only right to question where is the money going and why?

       “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”  The preamble to the Constitution of the United States starts out as we the people.  Not the president of the United States.  Not the government of the United States.  Not the leaders of the United States.  We the people must ensure that we all have the same dignity and the same opportunities for safety and welfare.  

      As a Black Conservative I must think it is right to also take on the political incorrect look at the Black community.  Notice I use the term as Black community and not African American community.  Recent years have seen many regions of Africa involved in war and internal or external conflict, from the seven or so countries directly involved in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to the Sierra Leone crisis and the war in Ethiopia/Eritrea and the various other civil wars.  Where is the outcry from the Black American Community about this injustice?  There have been over 9.5 million refugees and hundreds and thousands of people have been slaughtered. If this scale of destruction and fighting was in Europe, then people would be calling it World War III with the entire world rushing to report, provide aid, mediate and otherwise try to diffuse the situation.
      As of July 1, 2003, there were an estimated 38.7 million U.S. residents who were either black or black and at least one other race. This race group then made up 13.3% of the total U.S. population.  Black Americans spent $645.9 billion in 2002, an increase of 104 percent from 1990, according to Target Market News, a black consumer market research and information company (www.targetmarketnews.com) However, how much of those billions was spent within the community.  Maybe the disenfranchised in New Orleans would have income to have left the city.  Maybe those suffering in Africa could have their suffering eased.  African Americans have turned their backs on Africa as well as their own in America.

      I award myself the dead horse award for believing in conserving the Constitution and the belief of we the people.  I am aware that the Constitution was written by white men who didn’t consider Blacks or women as part of their thought processes.  The Constitution was written when there were no women Governors or Black Mayors.  Thinking that this is the reason not to adhere to the words of the constitution is the same as thinking that Moses only brought the Ten Commandments down from the mount to give to only the Jews that escaped the oppression of the Pharaoh.  I give myself the dead horse award for thinking it right for we the people to ensure that there is no disenfranchisements.   I give myself the dead horse award for showing that the poor is a sum total of all of us not just the Black community.  I give myself the dead horse award for pointing out that the
Black community in whole has wealth that can uplift those of our community that is not living in comfort.  I give myself the dead horse award for betting it with the expectations that we the people can make the difference.  President doesn’t have the word “we” in it.  Government does not have the word “we’ in it.  Leader does not have the word ‘we’ in it.  Am I just beating a dead horse or can we the people promote general welfare?