By Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Contributor

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama faced the problem in 2008. And now President Obama in his re-election bid faces the same problem. The majority of whites still will not accept his presidency.

The latest Associated Press-GfK (Roper Public Affairs & Corporate Communications ) polls once again told in stark numbers that the racial gap is just as big and daunting for Obama. The overwhelming majority of white independent voters say he does not deserve to be re-elected. An equally large majority of whites say they don’t like the job that he’s doing, especially on the economy. And overall, nearly 60 percent of whites will not support his reelection.

The hopeful news is this could change in the more than a year run-up to the November 2012 presidential election with the constant shifts and swings in voter attitudes, perceptions and events.
In any other election cycle and with any other president and presidential candidate, this pattern would hold true. The brutal fact is that the resistance to candidate Obama and President Obama from the majority of whites has been constant and unyielding.

This seems tough to believe, and even tougher to accept for several reasons. The myth that Obama made a major and lasting breakthrough in getting millions of whites to vote for him replaced the brutal fact that the majority of whites did not support him. In 2008, GOP Presidential candidate John McCain got nearly 60 percent of the white vote. Though this represented a significant inroad for Obama, in that he did better than Democratic presidential contenders Al Gore and John Kerry in 2000 and 2004 respectively, McCain’s getting the majority of the white vote was enough to keep him relatively competitive.

The first warning sign that Obama’s white support has been shaky and tenuous, cropped up not with McCain but with Democratic rival Hillary Clinton during the Democratic presidential primaries. In Pennsylvania and Ohio, Clinton drubbed Obama with the white vote. Many white Democratic blue collar voters openly said that they would not vote for Obama not because of any great love for Clinton, but because he was black. It took a near holy crusade turnout by black voters in both states to seal Obama’s win in the two key states and ultimately the White House.

The monumental GOP sex and corruption scandals, the towering domestic and foreign policy blunders of Bush, a collapsed economy, two costly and unpopular wars were not enough to decisively reverse the trend that a majority of whites, especially white males, will not back a Democrat, and in this case a black Democrat.

The shaky ground that Obama’s white voter support rested on eroded quickly at the first hint of trouble. The faint grumbles that Obama was too nice, too conciliatory, too indecisive and had no plan on the economy fanned by the borderline racist taunts of the Tea Party members, the pack of right wing professional Obama baiters on blogs, websites and radio talk shows grew quickly to crescendo pitch.

A Pew Research Center survey in April backed that up. White males still by big margins either disapproved or strongly disapproved of the president’s job performance. The continued high disapproval ratings among this group was even more glaring since it came at the point where more Americans than in the past year said they approved of Obama’s performance. But that did not include a majority of white males.

President Obama can’t do much more to ease the doubts and fears of many whites that he vowed to fulfill his duty as president of all the people, and to do the best job he can on legislation and public policy to serve the needs of all constituencies. He has even repeatedly drawn the wrath of the Congressional Black Caucus, publicly resisting their loud appeals for him to do and say more about the crisis of black joblessness and poverty. He’s paid a price for that as his approval ratings have dropped among blacks. But his unswerving race neutral, low-keyed, scrupulously non-confrontational, approach to presidential governance has meant absolutely nothing when it comes to changing the attitudes of many white voters. It’s in part the ancient mix of white suspicions and doubts about black competence, intelligence and ability, pure blind, naked bigotry, and unease with an African-American holding the world’s most visible and important political power position.

The GOP has played hard on the anger, frustration, and hatred that many males harbor toward government and their swoon over military toughness. And for four decades before that, it has been the trump card for winning GOP presidents.

It’s paying dividends again. Despite deep doubts among voters about the competence, credibility and even electability of the crop of GOP presidential candidates, polls show they are still in a neck-to-neck race with Obama. Race is not the only explanation for this, but it can never be discounted as a factor as long as Obama’s white problem exists.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and internet TV broadcast on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

By Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Contributor

Moments after President Obama put his John Hancock on the debt-ceiling deal, a Northern California Tea Party member claimed that when he proudly wore his Tea Party t-shirt to his local grocery store, half a dozen people immediately asked him how to join.

If one believes the legion of pundits who claim with smug assurance that the Tea Party, and by extension the GOP, cut its political throat by holding the White House, Congress and the nation hostage for weeks until it got its way on the debt deal, the Tea Party member in the grocery store is either the biggest liar on the planet or suffers from advanced political dyslexia.

Unfortunately, there’s really no reason to think anything of the sort. A quick look at the checklist of what Congress gave up tells why: 
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid on the chopping block; no extension of unemployment insurance benefits; no tax loopholes closed; no new tax and revenue hikes approved; no guarantee that any substantial military spending will be cut; creation of a so-called super-committee that can virtually unilaterally chop off billions more in spending from vital education, health, transportation, and infrastructure development programs that Congress is powerless to do nothing more than take it or leave it; no spending authorization to create jobs; and worst of all, the real possibility that within a few months Congress and the White House will be locked again in another round of fiscal sumo wrestling.

The manufacture of the phony debt-ceiling and fiscal crisis, the gutting of federal spending and by extension the federal government, the mocking of the political process to engage in this financial charade—all this was the handiwork of the Tea Party, a party that its short existence has managed to play the nation, the White House, Congress, and the media like a finely tuned Stradivarius. The Tea Party marvelously hijacked the political process with one goal in mind, a goal that it never bothered to hide: to hector, harass, embarrass, and ultimately insure that President Obama is a one-term president.

The seeds of the Tea Party’s hijacking of the Congressional budget were planted the instant President Obama took the oath of office. Tea Party leaders shrewdly reached back three decades and revived a simple theme from the Reagan years. Liberal Democrats had constructed a wasteful, out-of- control, and inefficient Big Government that had bloated the budget with deficit crushing spending on education, health, and infrastructure programs. The underlying implication was that the spending was lavished almost exclusively on minorities and the poor. And the people forced to bear the cost for the alleged Big Government spending spree were the hard-pressed, overburdened, overtaxed white middle and working class.

This was of course pure mythmaking. The Congressional Budget Office put debt and debt servicing costs at less than 2 percent of America’s economic output (aka the gross domestic product, or GDP). That figure is lower than at any point since the 1970s. The payments on federal debt under Reagan, Bush Sr., and Bill Clinton presidencies were above 3 percent of GDP. Only under G. W. Bush did that figure dropped.

There was no talk of a federal debt collapse in those years. But within one year of the Obama adminisration, the hysteria began, and now the U.S. was said to face financial Armageddon if trillions weren’t hacked from the budget. This, of course, was almost exclusively the talk of the Tea Party, which made their views the talk of Congress and the nation, with only scattered dissent from a handful of lawmakers. The Tea Party got its way not merely because it adroitly waylaid an issue to politically sabotage a president, but because it out-screamed, out-marched, and out-organized Democrats and its own GOP mainstream.

A recent Pew Research Center poll found that Tea Party adherents were twice as likely as other Americans to be engaged in the debate over the budget, blitzing their elected representatives with faxes, emails, and phones calls to stand firm. By a near 2-to-1 margin, Tea Party backers followed the news about the budget deliberations more intently than those who opposed the Tea Party.

Yet despite the Tea Party’s obvious budget triumph, some are foolishly crowing that this victory actually marks the party’s demise. That’s the kind of demise that established political parties would salivate over. Far from writing the epitaph for the Tea Party, pundits should focus on the ugly truth. The Tea Party has forced the White House, and Congress and a nation to look over its shoulder in nervous jitters at every overblown, clownish, and destructive scheme that its backers decide to dump on the nation’s plate. And make no mistake—there are more, many more, of those schemes to come.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter:http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

LOS ANGELES, Calif. — In quick succession, two brightly lit danger signs burst on President Obama’s reelection road. The first was the recent Washington Post/ABC poll showing that nearly as many African-Americans say they are displeased with Obama’s performance as those who approve. The prime reason for the discontent is jobs, or lack thereof, in black communities.

The jobless rate has hit crisis levels in many inner-city communities, and the perception is that the president simply isn’t saying and doing enough to combat the crisis.

The criticism is not fair given the absolute refusal of congressional Republicans and more than a few Democrats to kick out another penny for job stimulus and training programs. He has also had to beat back every effort by the same forces determined to hack, slash, and vaporize any spending on education and infrastructure spending. Nonetheless, the perception is still that Obama hasn’t done enough on the black-jobs front, and that hurts.

The second danger sign is that Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver, co-chair of he Congressional Black Caucus, flatly called the debt ceiling deal “a sugar coated Satan sandwich.”

Caucus members of been displeased with the president’s compromise and conciliation with the GOP to get a debt ceiling deal. But the comments by Cleaver, a Missouri Democrat, raised the inevitable question of whether there is a deeper meaning — that many black legislative officials are hearing the grumbles and feeling the heat from more blacks about Obama’s perceived failure to take more aggressive action to deal with black needs?

The Caucus has straddled the fine line between extreme care not to say and do anything that will give any more ammunition to Obama’s sworn enemies to attack him on policy questions. Certainly, they have not wanted to feed any public impression that their support (and that of black voters for Obama) has in any way diminished.

But the other side of that fine line is the crisis of black joblessness, compounded by an exploding wealth gap between black and white households that is as high as it’s been in modern times.
The expectation driven by mounting desperation is that Obama must take off the wraps and mount a frontal assault on the problems of the black poor.

But that bumps squarely up against the political reality that the GOP, Congress, and a divided Democratic Party has severely restricted his already tightly constricted political maneuverability. Those constraints have come just when he had to jump start new initiatives and programs to tackle the jobless plight of black males and the disproportionate number of blacks in home foreclosure, as well as spend more to combat failing inner-city public schools, curtail black homelessness and push criminal-justice reform.

The criticisms of Obama’s perceived failings have hit the mark with some blacks.
But criticism means little when no matter how badly some blacks think Obama has performed in confronting urban problems — and for being too willing to make nice with the GOP — they forget to consider this question: If not Obama, who?

It’s beyond absurd to even suggest any of the pack of GOP presidential contenders as any kind of alternative to Obama. For the past half-century, blacks have given every Democratic presidential candidate and president an unflagging 80 to 90 percent of their vote. This will not change in 2012, whether Obama is the Democrat presidential contender or not.

Even if some blacks, out of frustration or dislike for Obama, were tempted to look elsewhere, the GOP contenders have made it clear in word and deed they will mount a full assault on every program and initiative on health care, education, infrastructure investment and federal spending on job creation.
Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security, as well as education, labor and civil rights protections will also be under attack. Few black voters are prepared to commit political suicide to back anyone that will do that.

The fall off in Obama’s approval ratings among some black voters is no surprise. The expectation that Obama could whipsaw a GOP that has dug in its heels and opposed any and every program and initiative on Obama’s legislative table — not to mention for him to wage an open sustained battle for black needs — was always a fantasy.

But it’s no fantasy that despite the danger signs in the criticisms and disappointment of many blacks, Obama is the only thing that stands between the GOP and their total economic and political ruin.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and internet TV broadcast on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

By Ann-Marie Adams, Op-Ed Columnist

The Hartford Police Department has a lot of explaining to do for that incredulous delayed discovery of a decomposed body in the city’s South End.

Months after neighbors repeatedly called them and reported the horrid stench emanating from the house at 211 Goodrich St., police on Friday found an unrecognizable body that may belong to a 48-year old handicapped woman.

The news should be deeply disturbing to any decent human being. It should also serve as a reminder of the dysfunctional police department that needs a drastic overhaul.

After the incident made the evening news, Mayor Pedro Segarra on Saturday called for an investigation.

There are, however, several ongoing “investigations” within the department. This latest “investigation” will reveal only the pace of the sequence of events that led to this particular misconduct. This latest investigation will also just reinforce what some people know: many city police officers, sergeants and captains have an utter disdain for the people they are supposed to serve and protect with respect, courtesy and professionalism.

Who will investigate this police misconduct? Will the police be policing themselves? It seems Chief Daryl Roberts does not have control or respect of his officers. Under his watch, the police have seemingly been given carte blanche to treat law-abiding people as suspects, or ignore people in a time of need.

Earlier this year, Roberts declared that he had only two complaints against officers in the police department. Upon uttering that, he immediately undermined his credibility. Now with this incident, there’s a “discrepancy” between the police report and the incident. Is that another way of saying a police officer lied on his report? This seems to be a regular occurrence with the police. That’s because they know that when they show up in court, they are by default “credible witnesses.”

Like this recent complaint to the police about the stench, many other seemingly minor cases are ignored for more “pressing issues.”

For example, an allegation of misconduct against Hartford Police Capt. Joseph Buyak earlier this year was “closed on intake.” Translation? No need to look into an alleged misconduct. That complaint, like the one clearly made in February, is collecting dust. That non-caring attitude about citizens’ concerns has led to Friday’s gruesome discovery. Issues “not pressing enough” eventually snowball into catastrophic ones and implode. If this attitude continues, we’ll soon have a city drained of its already limited resources to deal with many implosions waiting to happen.

There must be consequences, not just for Friday’s incident but also for other alleged police misconducts that have been ignored for too long. Our history has shown us what happens to issues deferred. They explode.
Dr. Ann-Marie Adams writes a bi-weekly column for The Hartford Guardian. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

By Andrés Tapia, Commentary

CHICAGO — What a thrill. What pride. What a show of skill and prowess by the U.S. women’s national soccer team in the 2011 Women’s World Cup even as they lost in penalty shots to Japan on Sunday.

Too bad that this fabulous squad does not yet look like America.

Wambach made magnificent header goals; Rapinoe, great centers; Boxx, streaking shots from outside the box. I cheered them along, as they deserved to be cheered, and relished their hard-fought battle on behalf of a nation.

But my feelings were bittersweet. In a roster of 21 players, there are only two Latinas and no Blacks or Asians. In the team picture of bright, young, exuberant and inspiring faces, the hues and shades of an increasingly multicultural America are quite limited.

There is something deeply amiss in the lack of diversity on both the women’s and men’s national soccer teams—not only because one-third of the nation is missing in their composition, but because when we look at the age range of those who play soccer professionally, the gap is even more striking: 40 percent of this age group are people of color.

Given soccer’s popularity, particularly in the Latino community, the lack of diversity cannot be excused. While it can be said legitimately about golf, tennis, and swimming that the pipeline of diverse talent iis significantly limited given low participation numbers by minority children, the same cannot be said about this most populist of sports, futbol.

Yes, golf, tennis, and swimming must find ways to get more minorities involved, not only for the sake of these marginalized communities, but also for the sake of the vitality of these sports. By limiting the talent pool, is it any coincidence the United States has not dominated in golf or tennis in the past decade? Soccer has a huge built-in advantage over these other sports, even as the U.S. Tennis Association (USTA) significantly steps up its efforts to introduce tennis to 10-year-old kids of color. But colleges, the U.S. soccer teams, and pro-soccer farm systems are bypassing the massive number of female and male players of color in soccer .

As one looks at the player roster both in women’s and men’s soccer, how is it that diversity in this sport has been whitewashed?

When I played varsity soccer at Northwestern University,  I was the only Latino on the team—and a walk-on from South America, not a Hispanic American—and Floyd was the only black. Granted, Northwestern’s student body was not especially diverse to begin with, but surely in the soccer subculture there should had been some sort of over-indexing of diversity.

To increase the diversity of the U.S. teams—not only be truly America’s team, but to ensure that U.S. teams remain competitive—an all-out diversity effort must be launched.

First, more minority children must be enrolled in the largest soccer youth programs. When I coached my daughter’s soccer team, the $100 fees were out of reach for many working-class Latino families. To the league’s credit, it began instituting a sliding-scale fee funded by local individuals and companies. But while this increased Latino participation a bit, the lack of relations between the white and Latino communities made it hard to spread word about the program.

And even when more Latino kids did participate, coaches— many new to the sport of soccer themselves— did not know how to reconcile the differing expectations from Latino parents when practice schedules conflicted with work schedules at the family store or other business. The “no practice, no play” principle killed any nascent enthusiasm among working-class and immigrant kids and parents.

The barriers to entry in the more competitive youth travel soccer leagues are even higher, given the $1,000 fees and faraway road games that assume parents have cars and free weekends to schlep their cleat-clad kids.

But the institutions that truly have no excuse for the lack of diversity on their soccer teams are colleges. Thousands of girls and boys nationwide are playing in soccer at their public middle and high schools. Here participation is free, school buses transport the teams to their matches, and Immigrant parents have at least some working knowledge about school culture that they don’t have about para-organizations such as AYSO (American Youth Soccer Organization) and travel soccer.

Title IX, which demanded the playing field be evened out for collegiate women in terms of budgets, facilities and scholarships, is the No. 1 reason women’s sports in the U.S. have risen to the world-class caliber we saw in Sunday’s World Cup finals match. But as in corporate America, women’s gains in soccer have unfortunately ended up being white women’s’ gains, with Black, Latina, Asian, and Native American women conspicuously absent as beneficiaries of powerfully important gender-diversity programs.

To break through, we need U.S. Soccer, college soccer scouts and parents to shift their assumptions and behaviors.

In machista societies like the Latino one, girls have to be seen as legitimately able to compete in sports for fun or career, just as boys are. Scouts need to get comfortable going into the barrio and inner-city schools and to suburbs dominated by immigrants, just as football and basketball scouts started doing a generation ago.

And U.S. Soccer can up the ante by insisting that its scouts and coaches source greater diversity for players considered to be called on to wear the U.S. uniform.

Because that uniform belongs to all of us.

Frequent NAM contributor Andrés Tapia is president of Diversity Best Practices, a diversity and inclusion think tank and consultancy.

By Ann-Marie Adams, Op-Ed Columnist

Shawn Wooden is a curious fellow.

Not long after giving an impassioned speech about plans to be Hartford’s next elected mayor, he mysteriously quit.

The news last Thursday of his withdrawal from the mayoral race was strange, even within the context of Gov. Dannel Malloy’s intervention. It was also shocking to some. But not to those following the machinations of Hartford’s political underbelly.

Wooden, a prodigal son of Hartford, returned from New York several years ago and recently began pursuit of his long-held political ambition: to be the third black mayor of  Hartford.  Thirman Milner was the first in 1981 until 1987. Carrie Saxon Perry was the second in 1987 until 1993. Wooden was Perry’s assistant and a rising political star.

To some, Wooden had the mayoral timber to be “the next one.”  Had he continued on as the top contender to Mayor Pedro Segarra and won, he would have defied naysayers who said there will never be another black mayor in Hartford. Instead, Wooden raised then shattered the hope of many.

So for some residents, he still has some explanation to do. 

But to others, an explanation isn’t necessary. Wooden’s political pivot was inevitable.  Perhaps the essence of this inevitability lies in Wooden’s past in Project Concern, a school program that bussed Hartford students into the suburbs.

Wooden, while in Manchester High School, said he learned how to navigate his way around stereotypes about blacks. He apparently developed what some would call “engaging characteristics” appealing to suburban whites.  His experience exposed him to other children, (usually whites) who “expected to succeed.” This was a touted benefit of the program that began in 1966.

But few talked about the  psychological harm to some impressionable black teenagers in an all-white world perceived as ideal, especially ones without a solid foundation in their own history and thier people’s contributions to society. Was Wooden affected in such way? I don’t know.

But this much I do know: Wooden walked away learning how to negotiate a white world, but failed to learn how to navigate the old neighborhood he left behind.  So when he went knocking on doors there, few people warmed up to him.

As the story goes, Wooden left the neighborhood to achieve for himself and his family. And as one resident said: “He didn’t achieve for us.” I have yet to hear a story of Wooden doing pro bono work as a lawyer in his old neighborhood.

In addition, his wife was supposedly adamant about not placing their sons into the Hartford Public Schools. So to some, it was like this: “If your kids are too good to be in school with our children, you don’t need to be my mayor.”

While Wooden racked up record amounts of money for his mayoral campaign, his letter-writing campaign to solicit support from several Democratic Town Committee members resulted in naught.

And although he had the inside political connection, his campaign message lacked appeal to those outside city hall. His message was mostly tailored to corporate Hartford and to the suburbs rather than to Hartford residents. He also sent his press releases to media houses that cater to suburbanites, rather than to local neighborhood and ethnic press focused on Hartford.

Besides that political blunder, there was the issue of his hiring “an Indian from Ohio and a white girl from Kansas” to run his campaign, said Butch Lewis, who said he’s supporting Segarra.

“They couldn’t even find their way from downtown Hartford to Mahl Street,” Lewis said.  “He met with us and told us we’re not ‘intelligent enough’ to run his campaign.”

Ouch.

If that was actually true, Wooden showcased the same arrogance espoused by his friend and former mayor of Washington, D.C., Adrian Fenty. Fenty was perceived as someone who snubbed D.C.’s black community. He was reportedly insulting to D.C. taxi drivers, who on election day, galvanized. From sun up to sun down, taxi drivers volunteered to take people to the polls for free—all in an effort to vote out Fenty. Apparently Fenty forgot that these “foreign” taxi drivers were also citizens who could vote.

Here in Hartford, some African Americans had already decided they wouldn’t give Wooden a chance to get in as mayor—no matter how much money he amassed. Wooden’s decision to withdraw from the mayoral race may have been calculated several weeks ago. The questions Wooden had to face then were how and when.

But the question he will face as he continues on as candidate for the Hartford city council is: why?

Ann-Marie Adams, Ph.D.

Ann-Marie Adams, Ph.D. writes a bi-weekly column for The Hartford Guardian. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Send letters to The Editor : editor@thehartfordguardian.com

By Viji Sundaram, NAM News Analysis

No one who has been wrongfully accused of a crime should be prosecuted.

At this point, though, it is anyone’s guess whether the hotel maid who accused former International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexually assaulting her this past May was telling the truth. What happened in his Sofitel Hotel room is a matter of her word that it was rape against his that it was consensual sex.

As prosecutors, who at first believed her story, dug into her past, it became increasingly clear that the maid had exhibited a careless disregard for the truth on several occasions. So why should anyone believe her now, one might ask.

Initially, women’s groups felt heartened by this woman, whose name has been withheld because she is an alleged rape victim. Apparently assaulted while working in a modestly paying job, this relatively new immigrant from Guinea seemed to take the courageous step of speaking up.

Especially encouraging was that law enforcement officials not only believed her, they went after her alleged rapist without hesitation. When investigators found DNA evidence on the room’s carpet, bed and walls showing that there had indeed been a sexual encounter, the prosecution believed it had a solid case.

“It seemed,” as Miriam Yeung, director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, put it, “a progressive moment for women.”

The maid achieved, if only for a while, what Anita Hill couldn’t two decades ago. Hill accused then–U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment when she worked as his aide at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, where he was chairman.

After three days at the contentious hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the all-male panel gave Thomas the nod. A New York Times/CBS News poll at the time found that 58 percent of Americans believed Thomas, while only 24 perceived believed Hill.

Time and time again, when a woman has accused a man of rape or other form of sexual misconduct, there’s an inevitable measure of victim blaming. Few today recall the Big Dan rape case, which occurred in a bar in New Bedford, Mass., in the 1980s. The victim was gang raped on a pool table while other patrons looked on and cheered. When the story broke, the knee-jerk, misogynistic reaction from some was that the victim asked for it by dressing provocatively and, earlier in the evening, flirting with one of her assailants.

“This is a typical dynamic that plays out—detractors are quick to discredit the victim,” noted Beckie Masaki, associate director of the San Francisco-based Asian and Pacific Islander Institute on Domestic Violence, talking about the Strauss-Kahn case.

The hotel housekeeper’s credibility sank as investigators found, among other things, that she had lied on her application form claiming asylum in the United States because she’d been gang raped in her native Guinea.

Her credibility further plummeted when investigators secretly taped her telephone conversation with an incarcerated friend the day after the Strauss-Kahn incident about the potential benefits of pursuing the charges against Strauss-Kahn and possibly gaining financially because “this guy has a lot of money.”

But none should forget that Strauss-Kahn himself may not have been above board in his personal life. There is much talk about his rumored sexual transgressions. “I hope those things get as much attention as the hotel maid’s” past life, Yeung said.

In a joint statement on the allegations against the former IMF chief, the Women’s Legal Defense and Education Fund and 24 allied organizations nationwide questioned why it was “easier to believe in the intrinsic dishonesty, vindictiveness and opportunistic nature of alleged rape victims than to believe in a sense of entitlement and lack of respect and judgment among alleged rapists.”

The statement notes that “some are even willing to accept an elaborate conspiracy theory” that conservative French President Nicolas Sarkozy had plotted the hotel encounter in order to undermine Strauss-Kahn, a Socialist widely regarded as a leading candidate to succeed him. Believing such a scheme, the the organizations stated, may be easier for some people than embracing “the possibility that a man with a documented history of sexual coercion, exploitation and, according to recent reports, prior sexual assaults, could possibly attack a woman with very little power or status.”

Sexual abuse causes the victim to feel tremendous shame and a need to keep the incident a secret. Her biggest fear is that nobody will believe her— that she will be attacked and humiliated. The hotel maid either didn’t know this or she didn’t care.

After the trial of the New Bedford woman, which led to the conviction of four of her rapists, the woman had to leave town because she was ostracized by the community. She moved with her two young daughters and their father to Miami in search of anonymity.

Just because prosecutors have been able to poke holes in the hotel maid’s credibility, they should not automatically discredit her accusations.

“Focusing attention on her credibility takes attention away from the crime itself,” Masaki said. “This kind of over-focus on the victim will have a definite chilling effect on abused women who already worry about shame, as well as fear of losing their jobs.”

Prosecutors are already saying that they might drop the serious charges against Strauss-Kahn because they will more than likely not be sustained. If that happens, he will move on with his life. Although he’s unlikely to run for president of France now, he’s apt to find a plum job somewhere.

As for the maid, if she is allowed to remain in the United States, she will probably continue cleaning hotel rooms somewhere in America — and become as anonymous as she can.

New America Media, News Report, Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Democrats, from the White House down, screamed for New York Representative Anthony Weiner to resign, and he finally did. But it’s not a Democrat who’s breathing the biggest sigh of relief at Weiner’s downfall. It’s Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

There was much talk a year ago that Weiner would be the point man on the House Judiciary Committee if it decided to go after Thomas for his long trail of financial manipulations, abuse, and duplicity. Weiner gave signs that he’d be the go-to guy against Thomas. He had been publicly hammering Thomas’ dealings and demanding that he recuse himself from any High Court deliberations on the constitutionality of the health care reform law that conservatives loathe.

Weiner certainly had a lot of ammunition to make Thomas’ misdeeds a prima facie legal and political embarrassment for the GOP. Thomas’ wife Ginni had earned money from assorted right-wing foundations and think tanks, including the Heritage Foundation, the Koch brothers, the Coors family and Richard Mellon Scaife, all of whom had a major interest in a number of Supreme Court rulings. While Thomas disclosed her earnings, he did not disclose the speaking fees and perks he got from the same conservative groups that his wife worked for. He refused to acknowledge her involvement with Liberty Central, for example.

Then there was the strong hint that Thomas perjured himself in his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee during his court confirmation hearings in 1991, which he compounded by lying under oath to Congress during the hearings. A public official—whether the president, presidential appointees, or judges—can be punished for giving false information of any nature to Congress.

Utah Sen. Orin Hatch, during the confirmation hearings, asked Thomas directly about Anita Hill’s allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct and whether he had used sexually suggestive language.

Thomas answered, “I deny each and every single allegation against me today that suggested in any way that I had conversations of a sexual nature or about pornographic material with Anita Hill, that I ever attempted to date her, that I ever had any personal sexual interest in her, or that I in any way ever harassed her.”

Thomas was emphatic. He stated under oath to the Senate Judiciary Committee, “If I used that kind of grotesque language with one person, it would seem to me that there would be traces of it throughout the employees who worked closely with me, or the other individuals who heard bits and pieces of it or various levels of it.” Even then witnesses, who were not called to testify, were contradicting Thomas’ sworn testimony in public statements.

Two decades later, Thomas’ testimony to Congress was back on the legal table when another intimate of his confirmed that Thomas had engaged in sexual harassment, was addicted to pornography, and talked incessantly and graphically about it.

Close scrutiny by House Democrats of Thomas’ possible wrongdoing was taken off the table when the Republicans took back control of the House last November. Thomas’ financial misdeeds and dubious confirmation hearing testimony quickly disappeared from the news. But with the 2012 elections nearing and the possibility that the Democrats could either win back control of the House or substantially boost their numbers there, Thomas’ financial double-dealing and shadowy political ties could easily have been back on the political table.

Weiner showed intense interest in Thomas’ activities, publicly hectoring Thomas during the health care debate about his financial dealings. It was a signal that Thomas at some point could be fair game for an investigation. That would have done much to further expose financial, legal and moral high jinks by conservatives that the GOP routinely sweeps under the rug.

Thomas and the GOP don’t have to worry about that now. Thomas’ potential tormentor is out of the House, and Democrats seem content to put the matter behind them. Thomas can now safely breathe a big sigh of relief.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk shows on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

New America Media, First Person, Story by: Donny Lumpkins // Audio by: Malcolm Marshall.

MP3
My Addiction to Social Networking Part 1

MP3
My Addiction to Social Networking Part 2
I wake up most days and go straight to checking my emails — there might be something important that I should respond to.

Then, I check my Facebook. I reply to notifications, scroll down my wall to see what everyone was up to last night, dish out some “likes”, and retaliate in the three or four “poke” wars I’m currently engaged in.

After that, I check my good friend Rob’s Tumblr, called Coffin School. Thats a blogging website that he updates with funny, cool and interesting stuff. It’s a great morning pick-me-up and it’s usually third in line in my list of social networking checks in the morning.

After Coffin School, I check my Soundcloud – a music sharing website – to see what music my friends have posted recently and who has checked out the songs I’ve posted.

By the time my digital morning routine is finished, I’ve somehow seen part of the lives and innermost thoughts of a couple hundred people.

Facebook has somewhere around 500 million users around the world. According to Facebook itself, people spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook.

One avid Facebook user I spoke to in San Francisco, Elisa, told me she checks her Facebook about ten times a day. But that’s still below average for her friends who she says check their Facebook upwards of 30 times a day.

“People are involved,” Elisa said. “They update their statistics or put up links, or just see what other people are doing.”

When people vent about very private things publicly, there’s sure to be drama, she says.

“I’ve seen people write about their issues – mostly about guys or beef or gangs and bad relationships that didn’t go as expected.” Those are the types of discussions that churn out the drama.

She says she does her best to avoid the drama by not friending people she doesn’t know.

“They say on Facebook enemies are friends. If I don’t know a person and we don’t have mutual friends or when people post things talking about somebody else, I don’t comment,” she said.

As for myself, sometimes I’m not sure who is in control of my social life: Facebook or me.

I’m in the category Elisa was talking about: those people who check their profile pages upwards of 30 times a day. At my lowest of the low, I sometimes find myself refreshing the page a few times just to see if there’s anything new in the few seconds it takes the little spinning beach ball to settle again.

Sad, I know.

That may sound like a lot for some people, but it’s not rare at all. There has never been a time when private citizens handed over their privacy so easily and so willingly.

Dominique Dismuke, 24, of Fairfield, California feels my pain. She’s a heavy social networking user, with accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr and at one time also on MySpace (that’s all but forgotten now). She checks and updates them all the time.

She says she spends about ten hours a day on the networking sites she uses.

“In the morning, I really feel like I have to check all three just in case someone answered something or wrote me a message. It’s kind of like checking your voice mail – it’s like I have to check it.”

But Dismuke used to be a lot worse, she says. She used to get her Facebook notifications sent to her phone in text messages in order to stay constantly connected, but realized that that was a little too much. Whatever was on Facebook would still be there whenever she checked her Facebook account.

Twitter has around 18 million users. Those users send 1 billion tweets a week. The average number of accounts created per day is 460,000 – everyone seems to be tweeting away. Dominique follows 100 fellow Twitter-ers.

She’s cautious of imposters using fake names or claiming they are famous people or friends. Social networking websites are strange places where skeletons jump out of closets without warning. Trolls run wild, and beef is almost always what’s for dinner.

Dismuke says she has a friend who tweets really mean things to celebrities in the hope that they will write him back and cuss him out. “It’s the attention,” she says. “Because everyone can see all of this. When they respond to you, even if it’s bad it’s just that they said something to you.”

There are times when Dismuke wants to stop using the sites she frequents just because they can be stressful, and she can never really know who she is talking to.

“It just gets really catty after awhile. People will make fake Facebook pages because you blocked them so they can see your page,” she said.

I tried to shut my Facebook down a few weeks ago. At first it felt good, refreshing, like I had clicked off some switch that was letting off a really irritating noise that I didn’t realize was bugging me until it was silent.

But then, as the days passed, I found my fingers typing Facebook into my search bar when I wanted to type something else. Did Facebook want me back or did I want it back? Eventually, I gave in to my own will and reactivated my profile.

You win Facebook…you win.

For us young folks, if social networking sticks around we will presumably have most of our lives documented. The good, the bad, and the ugly will be on display for as long as the Internet is around. Old friends, new friends, family, coworkers, and old lovers are and will be closer than ever before. I am a strong believer in leaving the past behind, because some things need to be forgotten. But social networking makes that very difficult.

The more we invest in these sites, the more of our actual selves we put onto a digital platform, and the more attached we become to our online selves. It’s the first and only time any of us have had the chance to be seen exactly as we want to be seen by others, whatever that may be.

Perhaps that’s why social networking shows no signs of slowing down.

Donny Lumpkins, 23, is a content producer for Richmond Pulse and New America Media.

By  Ann Diamond, Commentary

HARTFORD — On the last day of Connecticut’s 2011 legislative session, condo and common interest owners received another nod of support in the form of the passage of HB 6234: An Act Concerning Elections of the Executive Boards of Directors of Condominium Unit Owners’ Associations and Changes to the Common Interest Ownership Act.

The bill represents a composite of previous bills, introduced to address the many complaints legislators have received from constituents over the management and governance of Connecticut condos.

Throughout the year the Connecticut Condo Owners Coalition (CCOC), a newly formed organization of volunteer members whose mandate is to work to protect the rights of condo owners and the health of their financial investments, has provided testimony before committees and to legislators through its membership’s personal accounts of horror stories, designed to demonstrate the need for new legislation that would ensure the enforcement of the current condo laws.

This effort to give condo owners the assistance they need was, also, initially led by Attorney General Blumenthal several years ago; and this year, Attorney General Jepsen agreed with his predecessor by re-submitting the proposal to establish within the Department of Consumer Protection an Office of Ombudsman, where condo owners could go for help in resolving conflicts with their association boards and management companies.

During this legislative session Rep. Jack Hennessy (D-Bridgeport), Rep. James Albis (D-East Haven) and Rep. Robert Megna (D-New Haven) worked to craft legislation that would provide some support and relief for condo owners.

Their efforts were met with great resistance by lobbyists of a nationally-connected organization that represents the interests of management companies and attorneys who litigate against condo owners on behalf of their associations.

Some of these attorneys were even members of the Judiciary Committee who succeeded in shooting down the efforts to establish an Office of Ombudsman.

When an attempt was made to follow the examples of Nevada and Maryland and to at least provide for mandatory arbitration of disputes, they blocked even this effort by saying that it isn’t possible to require associations to engage in arbitration.

In the end, they agreed to provide owners with a mechanism for gaining a hearing before their condo boards “before bringing an action or instituting a proceeding against an unit owner….”

While this is a long way from providing the kind of help with enforcement that is needed, it is an acknowledgment that boards have, in too many cases, acted unilaterally and without providing members with even an opportunity to engage in any discussions or attempts to resolve these disputes.

Connecticut is reported to have approximately 250,000 condo units.

This not only represents a tremendously important lifestyle choice–often made by the elderly, but the problems found within those communities have great and long-term implications not only for the individual owners, but also for their communities and for the cities and towns in which they exist.

Currently, the property values of condos vary and many have plummeted, not only as a result of the economy, but also as a result of poor management. More and more owners are leaving and are renting out their properties, which has had a negative impact on the up-keep and climate of those communities.

While attorneys and management companies have prospered at the expense of individual owners and condo communities, they appear to be unconcerned about the long-term ramifications of continual discontent and unresolved conflict.

The pressure of the economic problems facing Connecticut was, also, effectively manipulated by opponents to an Office of Ombudsman in their favor. Funding for this office would have come from a $4/unit/year fee much as has been done in other states and is done in Connecticut to protect consumers who hire contractors for home improvements or clients who use health clubs.

Even this nominal fee was held to be too great a cost, while all the time legislators and lobbyists continued to claim that any disputes between owners and their associations and/or management companies should be funneled through the State court system–a system already over-burdened by pending litigation and a system that is many times more costly to the taxpayers to run than an Office of Ombudsman could ever be….

The CCOC will continue to work with legislators to find ways to protect condo owners and their property. It is critical that owners with problems contact their legislators to educate them of their need for support. Without a mechanism to enforce condo laws–other than expensive, time-consuming and attorney-dependent litigation, the values of these properties and the quality of life are going to continue to decline.

It has been said that all that is needed is a little more time and some education of board members. For many too much time has already passed and no amount of education will change the attitudes and conduct of association boards who feel entitled and unaccountable to anyone for their actions and decisions.

The CCOC is a grassroots organization that solely represents condo owners from 103 cities and towns in Connecticut. There is no membership fee to join. If you are interested in reading more about the CCOC you can go to our website (which is under development) www.ctcondo.org and for more information on joining email ctcondoowners@yahoo.com.