By: BUD JOHNSON
African-American News&Issues Houston, Texas
As one of the most taxing years of the 21st century limps into eternity past, the average, overtaxed and underrepresented citizen of the United States of America, have cause to pause and ponder if 2004 will, indeed, be a Happy New Year and that’s why the above banner is punctuated with a question mark. Question mark notwithstanding, Pres. George W. Bush, after finally capturing Saddam Hussein, went on record to say that America has turned the corner and there’re better days ahead. And guess what? An overwhelming number of gullible Americans, including many made in America Africans believe him.
Moreover, according to a recent report from National Review Inc., “George W. Bush remains far and away the most trusted political figure in America on issues of national security. Sixty percent regard him as a strong leader; 60 percent also credit him with making the country safer from terrorist attack. Nor do things look auspicious for the Democrats' continued attempt to besmirch Bush's character-more than 50 percent of Americans regard Bush as more honest than most people in public life. The situation in Iraq gets better every day.” Even so, a countless numbers of jobless, working poor (minimum wage), disenfranchised, made in America Africans, are finding it more and more difficult to see a half empty bottle, that’s leaking from a crack at the bottom, as being half full.
Especially those who tend to view the world from a Black perspective.
Thus, as much as optimistic made in America African’s intelligentsia, who resent being considered a monolithic people and don’t identify with their uneducated, unemployed, or underemployed brothers and sisters (trapped in the urban jungles of the land of the free), want to believe that America will rebound in 2004, they simply would have to be out of touch with reality to ignore the NRI revelation: “The U.S. economy has lost some 2.7 million jobs since January 2001. It picked up 57,000 non-farm jobs in September, which is nice- but for the employment numbers to recover to where they were when George W. Bush took office, the economy will have to add an average of more than 200,000 jobs in every one of the 13 months until Election Day.”
Bush, however, seems to be unperturbed by such reviews, but, instead, is wont to agree with NRI’s conclusion: “That's not impossible-the U.S. economy created jobs at an even faster rate-- during the 1990s--but at the moment, it sure is looking unlikely. Poor employment numbers in swing states translate into poor re- elect numbers. Bush can probably shrug off his 44 percent approval rating in New York. But it's worrying that he is down to 55 percent in Ohio-and was at 54 percent in Florida at the beginning of August. The administration has been buffeted by negative news from the war on terror. Meanwhile, the costs of Iraqi reconstruction have risen unexpectedly high-and Washington was convulsed in late September by a media frenzy in which the Bush administration stood accused of exposing a CIA agent to score a political point.”
more…
http://www.aframnews.com/html/2003-12-31/lead1.htm
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