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e-mail:chronicle4@aol.com November 10-16, 2010 JACKIE BERG Chief Marketing Officer


BANKOLE THOMPSON Senior Editor


CORNELIUS A. FORTUNE Managing Editor


JOHN H. SENGSTACKE


Chairman-Emeritus 1912-1997 LONGWORTH M. QUINN


Publisher-Emeritus 1909-1989 Page A-6 Obama should focus on jobs


By Tonyaa Weathersbee If President Barack Obama had mounted a


search for the remnants of the coalition that, just two years ago, propelled him and the Dem- ocrats into power, he might have found bits of it scattered at a job fair yesterday in Greens- boro, North Carolina.


One brother, who was interviewed by a tele-


vision station, said he had to make a choice between taking a ride to that jobs fair or to go vote. The job fair won out.


Obama should take heed. Because no matter


what the pundits say, no matter how they spin the results of the first midterm election after two years with the nation’s first Black presi- dent, what’s clear is people always vote their pocketbook. Or — in the case of this brother — not at all.


In many ways the president, like so many


other black firsts, has been held to unrealistic expectations. He inherited the worst recession in more than 20 years, as well as two wars and a ballooning deficit. Add to that an electorate that was grappling with unemployment and economic uncertainty, one that was as nervous about the future as it was hopeful about it.


Obama came along, promising hope and


change. He’s accomplished much of that. Among other things, the president has signed laws to allot more money for college grants and made it easier for women to challenge pay dis- crimination. His Cash for Clunkers program pulled America’s automobile industry from the brink. And he managed to pass the landmark health care law.


Problem is, people are better able to savor


such accomplishments if they aren’t preoccu- pied with finding or keeping a job. And for much of the coalition that put Obama over the top two years ago — a coalition that included Blacks like the job-hunting brother, young people, Latinos and progressives — jobs is their main


motivator.But not a lot has happened for them there.


So the challenge for Obama is to find a way


to re-energize the coalition that brought him to power. He’s going to have to tap into their hopes again, first by making jobs a priority, and then immigration reform, and so on.


Of course, that will be a lot more difficult


now. The attacks of Tea Party wingnuts, Repub- lican obstructionists and Fox News — attacks designed to exploit the uncertainty of the elec- torate through planting doubts that maybe the Black guy doesn’t have the stuff needed to run this country — have taken their toll. He’s going to have to deal with a Congress led by people more committed to destroying him than uplift- ing the nation.


But even if they try to obstruct Obama in cre-


ating jobs, if he’s at least seen as being heavily invested in that grassroots issue, and not aloof and more wrapped up in high ideas than in common issues, that will go along way toward helping him piece his coalition back together. That coalition, in fact, could counteract the Tea Party simply by being energized by solutions, and by isolating the Republicans, who are pow- ered more by their hatred for Obama than their ideas for improving the country.


So there’s a lesson for the president today.


He must get back to work on putting people first. Somehow he must make that his center- piece and take charge of defining the debate that will invariably surround it.


While what Obama has done so far is his-


torical and important, it wasn’t enough to get enough young people, Black people or Latino people out to vote for the people who would help him continue to do that. And it’s not that they no longer believe in hope and change.


It’s just that hope and change goes better alongside a hefty serving of jobs.


By Norman Solomon


After election disaster, back to basics


Now what? We need to build a grassroots progressive


movement — wide, deep and strong enough to fight the right and challenge the corporate center of the Democratic Party. The stakes are too high and crises too extreme to accept “mod- erate” accommodation to unending war, regres- sive taxation, massive unemployment, routine foreclosures and environmental destruction.


A common formula to avoid is what Martin


Luther King Jr. called “the paralysis of analy- sis.”


It’s not enough to denounce what’s wrong


or to share visionary blueprints. Day in and out, we’ve got to organize for effective and dras- tic social change, in all walks of life and with a vast array of activism. Yes, electioneering is just one kind of vital political activity. But gov- ernment power is extremely important. By now, we should have learned too much to succumb to the despairing claim that elections aren’t worth the bother.


Such a claim is false. As bad as the elec-


tion results are, they would have been much worse across the country if progressives hadn’t worked hard against the right-wing jugger- naut.


For instance, consider the many hundreds


of on-the-ground volunteers who rejected the paralysis of analysis by walking precincts and making phone calls to help re-elect progres- sive Congressman Raul Grijalva. He won a tight race in Arizona’s southwestern district and


Economy adds 151,000 jobs, but even so ...


By Dean Baker Nominal wages have risen at a 2.2 percent


annual rate over the last quarter. The establishment survey showed the econ-


omy adding 151,000 jobs in October, the big- gest rise since May. The 159,000 increase in private sector employment was the second- largest monthly rise of the recovery. Although the rate of job growth is about 50,000 more than is needed to keep pace with the growth of the labor force, the employment-to-population (EPOP) ratio still fell by 0.2 percentage points to 58.3 percent. This is just above the 58.2 per- cent low reached in December of last year.


The decline in the EPOP was primarily due


to a falloff among Whites. Blacks saw a modest increase in their EPOP from 51.7 percent in September to 52.4 percent in October. By con- trast, the EPOP for White men fell by 0.4 per- centage points to 67.7 percent, just 0.3 percent- age points above the low hit last December. The EPOP for White women fell by 0.3 percentage points to 53.3 percent, a new low for the down- turn and the lowest EPOP for white women since October of 1993. There was also a drop of 0.6 percentage points in the EPOP for Hispan- ics to 58.6 percent, just 0.1 percentage points above the low point hit in December of 2009.


Other data in the household survey suggest


will return to Congress next year, much to the disappointment of the corporate flacks and xe- nophobes who tried to defeat him because of his strong stance against the state’s new racial- profiling immigration law.


The mass media echo chamber now insists


that Republicans have triumphed because President Obama was guilty of overreach. But since its first days, the administration has undermined itself — and the country — with tragic underreach.


It’s all about priorities. The Obama presiden-


cy has given low priority to reducing unemploy- ment, stopping home foreclosures or following through with lofty pledges to make sure that Main Street recovers along with Wall Street.


Far from constraining the power of the Re-


publican Party, the administration’s approach has fundamentally empowered it. The osten- sibly shrewd political strategists in the White House have provided explosive fuel for right- wing “populism” while doing their best to tamp down progressive populism. Tweaks aside, the Obama presidency has aligned itself with the status quo — a formula for further social disin- tegration and political catastrophe.


The election of 2010 is now grim history. It’s


time for progressives to go back to the grass- roots and organize with renewed, deepened commitment to changing the direction of this country. If we believe that state power is crucial — and if we believe in government of, by and for the people — it’s not too soon to begin planning and working for change that can make progres- sive victories possible in future elections.


By William Rivers Pitt I am beginning to loathe November. Every


Another hard November


second year, we as a nation endure the parox- ysm of election, and every second year seems to be more demented than the last. Do not get me wrong, I am a devotee of the church of de- mocracy, and I get a deep visceral thrill every time I get to cast a vote. But man oh man, it is a trying time every time, and never more so than over the last ten years.


2000 was the match to the fuse that blew the


country apart. 2002 was Max Cleland getting compared to Osama bin Laden while Karl Rove told his fellow Republicans to “run on the war” in Iraq that was still five months from coming to pass. 2004 brought the unthinkable re-elec- tion of the worst president this nation has ever seen, with a little help from some gutter-low electoral hijinks in Ohio.


2006 saw the Democrats finally pushing


back, only to take their new power and do little with it; the wars went on, the Bush pro- gram continued unabated, and the justice of impeachment was declared “off the table.” In 2008, we were spared the horror of “President McCain and Vice President Palin,” only to be handed half a loaf after half a loaf by a Demo- cratic congressional majority that could not get out of its own way, and by a White House that sought compromise from a GOP minority that, quite simply, wanted the new president and his whole party dead.


There was a hint of an idea after 2008 that


the insanity of the previous eight years had been broken, finally and forever, but it did not last. Now, in this year of our Lord 2010, we have endured yet another deranged November, and the same American people who had been so victimized by savage GOP policy decided their best bet was to let the wolf back inside


that there is continuing weakness in the labor market. The percentage of the unemployed who voluntarily quit their jobs, a sign of confidence in the labor market, increased 0.4 percentage points from the low hit in September, but the 5.8 percent October level still makes October one of the lowest months in the downturn. The number of involuntary part-time workers fell by 289,000 from September, but at 9,047,000, it is still more than 300,000 above the August level.


The unemployment-duration measures all


showed modest increases, but are still below the peaks hit last summer. This likely reflects people who gave up looking for work once their benefits expired. The number of discouraged workers is running more than 400,000 (50 per- cent) above its year-ago level.


The story in the establishment survey is


somewhat more encouraging. The pace of job growth is about 50,000 above what is needed to keep even with the growth of the labor market. At this rate it would take more than 15 years to make up the job shortfall from the downturn, but at least the economy is moving in the right


Dean Baker


direction. The


job


growth was concen- trated in a relatively small number of sectors, which does raise concerns as to whether it can be sustained. Education services added 19,200 jobs, more than twice its average over the last year. The addi- tion of 24,400 jobs in restaurants brought


the 3-month increase to 85,000, the best


performance since the period from October of 2006-January of 2007. Such gains could be re- versed in future months.


The 29,400 job gain in employment services


is more encouraging. With an upward revision to the September data, job gains in this sector have averaged 30,200 in the last two months. This is a positive sign, since temporary em- ployment can be a precursor to permanent employment. However, this job gain is still low compared with the 73,900 monthly growth rate between October 2009 and January 2010.


The average workweek increased by 0.1


hours, reversing a September decline. This is an important series to follow, since it has im- plications both for the theory that structural factors are responsible for high unemployment and also the claim that uncertainty is discour- aging firms from hiring. In both cases, average hours should rise. In the first case, because firms are unable to find the workers with the skills they need; in the second, because firms are meeting their demand for labor by working the existing workforce longer rather than ac- cepting the commitment associated with hiring new workers.


The actual pattern shows a modest uptick


in hours, but we are nowhere close to the pre- recession levels. Furthermore, the big gainers are manufacturing and construction, not sec- tors thought of as being the center of the high- skill economy.


On the whole, this report should be viewed


as positive, but it is not clear that even this modest rate of job growth will be sustained. Gov- ernment employment will be a drag on growth, and some of the sectors showing strong growth may have reversals in future months.


Clergy sexual misconduct


By Rev. Joel A. Bowman We have recently been bombarded with al-


legations that “mega-church” pastor Bishop Eddie L. Long coerced several male members into sexual relationships. If you’re like me, your initial response was, “Not again . . . please say it isn’t so!” Though each of us might have our own personal opinion regarding Bishop Long’s innocence or guilt, no one in the gen- eral public knows what really happened. How- ever, I hope and pray, for the sake of the alleged victims, Bishop Long, and the Body of Christ, as a whole, that the accusations are not true.


However, one thing is unequivocally clear.


the fence. The first Tuesday of the month of Novem-


ber has come and gone, and this is the point in the exercise where people in my line of work are expected — nay, required — to indulge in a load of what-does-it-all-mean navel-gazing. For the most part, it all comes out to be noth- ing more or less than an avalanche of verbal diarrhea from so-called “experts” who allegedly should know better, but clearly don’t.


This particular November has been no excep-


tion, and the only reason I haven’t put a bullet through my television is because I like watch- ing the Celtics, Bruins and Patriots too much. Maybe I’m weak, but there are other channels besides CNN, and I am thankful for small favors because of it.


What does it all mean? Let’s see. It means that the US House of Representa-


tives, and to a lesser extent the US Senate, have once again been transformed into a theater of the absurd. Rep. Allen West of Florida is proud to have tortured an Iraqi policeman during his tour of duty, and prouder still to be a member of an outlaw motorcycle gang. Rep. Vicky Hartzler thinks God told her to amend her state’s con- stitution to ban gay marriage. Rep. Tim Walberg believes the best use of the House of Represen- tatives’ time would be to pursue impeachment proceedings against President Obama to deter- mine the validity of his birth certificate. Sena- tor Rand Paul sounds like he will block efforts to pay the national debt, despite the fact that such an act would cripple the dollar and anni- hilate the global economy.


This scandalous situation provides us with the opportunity to openly discuss one of those “sick secrets” of the church: clergy sexual mis- conduct. Address it we must, in a constructive, informed, and biblical manner. The “elephant in the room” must be exposed, so that clergy sexual misconduct can be prevented, and our congregants will not be victimized.


Our first order of business is to define “clergy


sexual misconduct.” Whenever a preacher en- gages in sexual activity with a church member, or member of their faith community, that is more than “an affair,” an “abuse of power.” For ministers of the Gospel to engage in sexual ac- tivity with members of their faith community, to whom they are not married, is exploitive and abusive of such persons.


Okay, I know what some may say, “Some


women come to church to prey (that’s p-r-e-y) on preachers.” While it is true that some women are infatuated with clergy, that does not excuse clergy who engage in such illicit and inappro- priate relationships. Whether forced or “con- sensual,” clergy sexual abuse is dead wrong, sinful, and yes, criminal. Ironically, though, sexual misconduct by clergy is only illegal in the states of Texas and Minnesota. Therefore, much work needs to be done in this area of leg- islation.


In 2008, my colleague, Dr. Diana R. Garland,


Dean of the Baylor University School of Social Work, conducted a study on clergy sexual mis- conduct (also known as CSM). To date, this is the most comprehensive and significant piece of research done on this subject. As both a pastor and clinical social worker, I have been honored to serve as a consultant on this proj- ect. Dr. Garland’s research revealed that Roman Catholic priests are not the only “offenders.” Clergy sexual misconduct crosses all religious, denominational, and racial lines. According to


Dr. Garland and her research partners, “clergy sexual misconduct refers to a religious lead- er’s sexual overture, proposition, or relation- ship with a congregant who is not his or her spouse or significant other.”


Of the 3,559 respondents in a survey con-


ducted by Dr. Diana R. Garland, dean of the Baylor University School of Social work:


• More than 3 percent of women who had


attended a congregation in the past month re- ported that they had been the object of CSM at some time in their adult lives; 92 percent of these sexual advances had been made in secret, not in open dating relationships and 67 per- cent of the offenders were married to someone else at the time of the advance.


• In the average American congregation of


400 persons, with women representing, on av- erage, 60 percent of the congregation, there are, on average of 7 women who have experienced clergy sexual misconduct, and Of the entire sample, 8 percent report having known about CSM occurring in a congregation they have attended. Therefore, in the average American congregation of 400 congregants, there are, on average, 32 persons who have experienced CSM in their community of faith.


This is a serious problem for which God will


hold religious leaders and the church account- able. The call to ministry is noble, indeed. God takes this call very seriously, for the Apostle Paul says, in 1 Timothy 3:2, the pastor is to be “blameless” or “above reproach.”


As Bishop Long implied, none of us is per-


fect. However, this fact can never be used as an excuse for one to take advantage of God’s precious sheep.


Countless persons have been victimized by


“preying preachers.” As a result, many survi- vors of clergy sexual abuse have either turned away from the Christian faith or rejected it alto- gether.


Let us reach out to these persons with the


unconditional love of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, let us pray that the “offenders”


are brought to justice and provided the profes- sional treatment that they sorely need.


Rev. Joel A. Bowman is founder and senior


pastor of Temple of Faith Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky. This article previously ran in the Louisville Defender.


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