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Why Disadvantaged Communities
Cannot Wait.
October 23, 2022 by Staff
(ThyBlackMan.com) Anyone who has not been living under
a rock throughout their lifetime and has the ability to interpret history in
an honest manner should be able to understand that the chronic and egregious
effects of discrimination and greed have always been at the forefront of most
of society’s problems. The detrimental effects of these forms of ignorance
have long prevented human beings across all ethnic, economic, age, gender,
disability, and religious backgrounds from being able to reach our collective
potential as people to solve life’s problems and live in harmony.
Sadly, for far too long, those challenges and more continue to
be exacerbated by our reliance upon and broken promises of the dream-selling
people we naively elect and appoint to public office and government
positions, but who repeatedly fail to deliver anything worthwhile.
Instead of embracing common sense and reality by recognizing
that the overwhelming majority of such officials care less about anyone
outside of their immediate families (and some feel the same about their own
relatives too), citizens continue to allow those they have empowered to make
life-altering decisions on your behalf to do so without unnegotiable
expectations and effective consequences. As a result, many of these
decision-makers who are supposed to be ‘serving’ in elected or appointed
government capacities are instead reaping the rewards of holding onto
opportunistic seats where they continue to abuse the public trust by
irresponsibly misallocating taxpayer dollars, taking advantage of inflated
salaries and benefits (which often include participating in Deferred
Retirement Option Plans or another comfy pension plan), wasting public money
on costly expenses tied to travel and attending meritless conferences,
meetings, trade missions, and association memberships that fail to produce life-improving
results for residents of the city, county, or state which such elected
officials or appointed government employees represent.
Together…citizen
complacency, governmental negligence, and malfeasance are causing
catastrophic problems for communities across the nation, with the worst
impact being felt by distressed urban communities of color.
Research by a number of reliable sources like the Urban
Institute and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development,
reveal income inequality
continues to rise at alarming levels. According to a 2015 report published
in the Urban Institute, “Income gaps are only part of the story when it comes
to economic inequalities in America.
Wealth inequality is even
greater. The racial wealth gap is 3 times larger than the racial income gap!”
The same report cautioned that wealth inequality is increasing, young
Americans are falling behind, racial wealth disparities worsen with age, and
solutions such as “Helping people enroll in automatic savings vehicles, as
well as reforming policies like the mortgage interest tax deduction so it
benefits all families, will help improve
wealth inequality and promote saving opportunities for
all Americans” should be the preferred path. (Signe-Mary McKernan, Caroline
Ratcliffe, and C. Eugene Steuerle).
Urban and rural communities throughout every state today do
not have any more time to waste. For the average middle to low-income person
in America, getting swept up in the disillusionary hype associated with
partisan politics, voter registration drives, making financial contributions
to campaigns, and voting in elections has continued to prove fruitless to
them, while this ‘systematic game’ continues to be nothing more than a ploy
towards seizing privilege, power, and money for candidates and those involved
with their campaigns who possess personal agendas. Disagree with that
observation? Consider another issue involving today’s dysfunctional systems
of government.
According to OpenSecrets (opensecrets.org), a nonpartisan
research group that tracks money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections
and public policy, Federal-level
candidates, and political committees will spend more than $9.3 billion
on 2022 federal midterm elections.
State-level candidates, party
committees, and ballot measure committees are on track to raise more than $7
billion during the 2022 election cycle. Billions more are being raised and mis-spent (in 2022 and
each election year after) on campaigns for candidates running for Mayoral,
City and County Council seats, County Executive/CEO, District Attorney/Chief
Prosecutor, and other Municipal-level and County-level positions.
Yet, the majority of citizens and small businesses in
practically every city across the nation struggle (financially) to survive
day-to-day, and income-eligible homeowners are lied to or ignored by
City/County-sponsored Home Repair Programs that are supposed to assist them
with limited repairs to their homes, although their same city, county, and
state governments expect these homeowners to continually pay property taxes
each year which the government abuses. Requiring economically disadvantaged
people to do more and pay more with less is a heartless and dangerous
expectation.
This, in addition to
the dismissive mindset and careless misappropriation of taxpayer dollars by
those in governmental positions, is atrocious.
Instead, transforming blighted and rustic regions into
eye-pleasing, residential and business-friendly neighborhoods benefit entire
communities-at-large. The lack of living wage job and trade skill
opportunities available to everyone (including ex-offenders & people with
low or no skills), unaffordable housing, increases in utility rates, rising
food costs, unfair taxation which favors corporate America & the
wealthy, abusive credit reporting practices in the employment hiring process
and rental housing decisions, and eye-bulging gas prices combine to force
even the most level-headed people to consider lifestyles of desperation that
sometimes involve illegal activities. All of which can be interrupted or
prevented if voters would make more conscious decisions about who they choose
to vote into office, demand much better from people working in government
positions, and discover the power of economic boycotts to produce change.
Click on the following tool designed by OECD.org to gauge your
own household income, how we compare with the rest of the U.S. and other
countries, and see how income inequality affects your ideal world: https://www.compareyourincome.org/.
Staff Writer; Santura Pegram
This brother is a prolific writer and socially conscious
business professional who has helped to advise small businesses; nonprofit
organizations; city, county, and state governmental committees; elected
officials; professional athletes; and school systems. He was a one-time
protégé-aide to the “Political Matriarch of the State of Florida”
– the late Honorable M. Athalie Range.
He can be reached at: Santura.Pegram@ThyBlackMan.com.
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NOTHING NEW! T'his is exactly what happened after Rita and Katrina in New Orleans. FEMA is very much aware and if FEMA let it happen again then there are those withing the agency that are benefiting from this atrocity to the resident of those communities.
FEMA has the information and history of many of the contractors and can and should be able to address this issue directly.
What is more important FEMA can Mission Assign the National Guard to remove debris which is hazardous or necessary to be removed to restore order or needed health and safety. The FCO for the disaster should be contacted and someone...YOU? should make a demand that they do their damn job before we get the congress involved in seeing who is benefiting from this deliberate misuse of federal funds.