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February 2012
With all the talk about the economy relative to the rich and the poor, tax inequity, disparities in employment, and high prices for the necessities of life, one very important consideration for Black people in the U.S. is cash flow both individual and collective. Simply put, cash flow projections tell us how much cash is coming in and how much is going out. Good projections also allow us to get in front of an impending problem rather than having to react to it when it’s too late.
Businesses suffer when cash flow projections are improperly planned and “red flags” are not dealt with in a timely manner. Black folks are suffering because our cash flow is jackedup, which means it continues in a negative mode rather than a positive one. We have much more going out than coming in, and that has resulted in our individual family net worth being less than $6,000 on average. And many of us have a negative net worth, which means even after we die, someone will have to continue to pay our bills.
In business, cash is king; unfortunately, that saying is not being applied in our neighborhoods and households, as we continue to outspend everyone else in this country, handing over our cash to any and every business we can find to support that is, except our own. Cash is the life-blood of any community; if it flows through a community, via locally owned businesses, rather than out of a community, via businesses whose owners live in another community, the result is good economic health for the community.
It is unfortunate that, for the most part, Black folks only talk about “recycling” dollars while failing to actually implement the principle. But all is not gloom and doom; we still have time to change, and we do have a great deal of “disposable” income. Instead of “disposing” our nearly $1 trillion annual income among everyone else’s businesses, we must find ways to keep more of it among ourselves for a longer period of time. How can we accomplish that? Business development and business growth.
Entrepreneurship is the way out of our negative economic situation. Yes, we need to establish more businesses, but we must also grow those businesses to the point of being able to employ our people our children. According to the last economic census, of the 1.9 million Black owned businesses in the U.S., only 106,500 have employees. And to add insult to injury, the number of those employees is a meager and embarrassing 909,000, all of whom are not Black.
If the vast majority of Black businesses continues to be sole proprietorships, our cash flow will stay on the negative side and our net worth will continue to be 20 times less than that of whites. If all we do is complain about being on the bottom, without kicking, scratching, and doing everything we can to move up economically as Malcolm, Garvey, Tony Brown, and many others have admonished us over and over, then we certainly deserve the negative result.
In order for Black cash flow to be positive, it must change its direction. Our dollars must start making more sense. Entrepreneurship is a major component of economic empowerment, thus, we must place more emphasis on it in our homes, our schools, our churches, and in our neighborhood circles.
Currently, Black cash flow projections are not looking positive at all. Our neighborhoods are in economic distress despite having significant cash on hand from week to week. However, as Michael Shuman noted in his book, Going Local (2000), “Being [classified as] poor doesn’t always mean being without resources. Anacostia is one of the poorest neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., yet the total income of all its households is $370 million per year. Most of this money quickly departs in the hands of landlords, business owners, and bankers who live in more upscale parts of town…The principal affliction of poor communities in the United States is not the absence of money, but its systematic exit.”
Stronger and larger local businesses, hiring local residents and family members, play a major role in economic empowerment. So too does owning the houses and apartment buildings in our neighborhoods, many of which are on the market at very low prices. These basic economic solutions go a long way toward keeping our cash flow positive and making our self-reliance a reality rather than some nebulous feel-good term we like to use once or twice a year.
Economics is local. If we teach entrepreneurship, start businesses, grow our businesses through support and mutually beneficial relationships, and own the real estate, our neighborhoods will become genuine communities once again.
I'M BLACK AND I'M PROUD

By B.C. Hicks
February 2012
People from my era at Dartmouth College will recall a day-long "Rap on Race" that was held between students, faculty and administration after shanties that had been erected on the Green to protest the College's support of South Africa's apartheid regime were sledgehammered by students calling themselves conservatives. The attack on the shanties occurred at night while protesters were sleeping inside of them - a clear violation of Dartmouth's sacred "principle of community."
Unfortunately, for Dartmouth people and Americans in general, discussions such as the "Rap on Race" are precipitated by emergencies and take place infrequently. After the crisis has passed, comments raised fade into memory and life proceeds as it always has.
For black Ivy Leaguers, black corporate Americans and blacks at the highest levels of government, race is always top-of-mind because, too often, the white people they encounter in these environments presume themselves to be superior, better qualified and more entitled to raises & promotions. Tradition and the old-boy network support them in this way of thinking.
The essay collection I wrote entitled, MANHATTAN PROMETHEUS: A Time Inc. Employment Memoir, provides many examples of a media company, tasked with increasing knowledge and encouraging input from all sources, instead acting to keep mediocre white males in the elite and terminating black employees who dare to raise "inconvenient truths" about Time Inc.'s culture and the unhealthy, uninformed racial attitudes that prevail in that company, elsewhere in the media and entertainment industry, and throughout corporate America.
These essays were filed with the Library of Congress in 1995, more than a decade in advance of Barack Obama's historic run for the White House, but the issues and problems raised in my writing are as real and persistent today as they were almost 17 years ago. A case in point: Michelle Obama's Princeton thesis describing the two social worlds (one black, one white) that she inhabited as a black Ivy Leaguer in the 1980s made so much news during the 2008 Presidential campaign that Princeton made it unsearchable in their database. The university's action supports Attorney General Eric Holder's remark that Americans are "cowards" when it comes to addressing the issue of race.
Ralph Ellison's 1952 novel Invisible Man inspires the work I do as a multi-media crusader for racial understanding in American society and the American workplace. I represent a black business constituency, the military and the Ivy League, and I believe my new essay collection I'm Black and I'm Proud: Staying Strong in the White Man's World, will spark continuing discussion and debate as to whether or not we live in a "post-racial society" now that a black man and his family occupy the White House.
Because the Obamas continue to face charges of "elitism" for speaking like educated people and because Herman Cain was forced to contend with a "high-tech lynching" effort that ultimately torpedoed his candidacy, I believe that Americans have a long way to go before we can make the claim that "race is no longer an issue" in this country.
Through magazine & newspaper op-eds, by addressing business groups and by creating programs for radio, television & film, Invisible Man Enterprises is helping this country reconcile its paradoxical love of democracy on the one hand and its reverence for hierarchies (usually headed by white males) on the other.
America is as close as history has come to a society that rewards its citizens based on the contributions they make to the economy. Invisible Man Enterprises is committed to ensuring that merit and excellence prevail over tradition and cronyism in this promising, but still very young experiment in democracy we know as the United States of America.
B. C. Hicks is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the founder of Invisible Man Enterprises, a public relations and diversity consulting company. He is the author of "Manhattan Prometheus: A Time Inc. Employment Memoir" and "I'm Black and I'm Proud: Staying Strong in the White Man's World", which can both be ordered online through the CreateSpace eStore and Amazon.com; both books will soon become available at bookstores everywhere. Direct comments and inquiries to Mr. Hicks
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PUBLISHER AND CEO
DOREEN WADE
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February 2012
As a Board Member of UVCC, the United Voices for a Common Cause, Inc. www.theunitedvoices.com I have been asked a lot and most recently from my own Sales Manager, why am I so passionate about stopping the use of the "N" Word. I have been giving so many reason which makes people stop and look at me. People in today's society who do not really understand what that word means can not feel my passion. I have two reasons for my passion. And those reason should speak for me. First, I had a best friend who is a white woman, her father was from Kentucky and her mother from Tennessee. I was standing in her doorway as a teenager and I hear her father say "those niggers". I stood in the doorway unseen until he turned his head sideways and noticed me and my water filled eyes. I loved these people as if they were my own family but I could see the anger and rage inside of him as he was saying them. Anger I never saw in him before. He looked at me and said, no "D" you are not one of them. You are a good girl. You just come from a bad race of people.
Reason two, from the days of slaver to 1970 when a white man was filled with hate for his fellow black man he would stand in your face, look you in the eye and say "Nigger". When you looked at him or looked toward him because of course you could not look a white man directly in the eyes, you were about to get beat, whipped, lynched or burnt. Whatever they felt as if they were going to do to you.
In both cases the word "Nigger" mean GUILTY. I am a proud black woman who lives her life the best she can, I don't need anyone, anyone, placing guilt on me or putting me in a getting situation. So don't call me anything but Doreen. My name is my identty, so think about it, if you are begin called "N" is that who you identify yourself to be?
MATHIS' MIND WITH JUDGE GREG MATHIS
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February 2012
Congressional Republicans have unintentionally given President Obama a gift with their inept and negative approach to creating public policy that meets the needs of the average American.
Prior to the Christmas holiday, Congress was locked in a debate over whether or not to temporarily extend both tax cuts to middle class Americans and unemployment benefits. Republicans, as is becoming the norm, fought hard to set up road blocks so the legislation wouldn’t pass, saying they’d rather wait until the full Congress could pass a year-long extension, saying a temporary extension made no sense. Clearly the Republicans didn’t give much thought to what to American families would have to do to make ends meet while they waited what could be months for that full bill to be debated and passed.
Understandably frustrated with the political games, President Obama took his case to the American people, asking Americans to share what the extra money would mean to their bottom line. Realizing that continuing to fight the issue would hurt their chances in the 2012 elections, Republicans finally did the right thing and let the bill pass.
Obama was victorious. But that isn’t the only gift the Republicans gave him. While making his plea to the country, Obama displayed the same characteristics of that bold candidate who swept into the White House nearly four years ago. He showed that he could and would stand strong, even in the face of nonsensical Republican opposition, and deliver.
Even a novice political observer is aware that President Obama has faced several major challenges during his first term. Tensions created by renegade Republicans with no other agenda than to see him fail haven’t helped matters much. Thank God the Republicans woke up and did the right thing by the American people. Let’s hope that, regardless of who is in power after the 2012 elections, they will continue to put the needs of American people ahead of their own.
Even though Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney is hesitant to release his tax returns, he is on record saying that he is probably at a 15-percent tax rate. This means that Romney, who has a net worth of over $200 million, has a lower tax rate than most middle-class American workers. By comparison, President Obama had a 26-percent tax rate in 2010; the income that was taxed included his book royalties, which undoubtedly totaled more than one million dollars.
Romney's wealth and his comparably low tax rate highlight a very important issue: income inequality. In the U.S., income inequality, that is the gap between the rich and everyone else, has grown steadily for decades. With the recession and subsequent job losses moving more and more people from the middle class into poverty, the discussions over wealth and taxes have taken on an entirely different -sometimes-hostile - tone.
It is unconscionable to think that CEOs of major companies can earn tens of millions of dollars each year, while their employees, who work long hours to generate the profit that would net such a large salary, earn much less and probably pay a higher tax rate. Warren Buffet, one of the richest men in the world, shockingly revealed that his own secretary pays a higher tax rate than he does. Like most of us, Buffet doesn't see how this could possibly be fair.
Romney is so rich that he doesn't actually work. Instead, he lives off the interest off his investments. These investments are taxed at a much lower rate than the standard 35-percent that is normally levied onto the salaries of wealthy Americans. Romney is using a special provision to ensure less of his money goes into government coffers; a practice that many think is unfair.
Changes have to be made in our nation's tax code so that everyone is paying taxes comparable to their income. No one is asking for a socialist system where everyone makes the same. However, it is only fair that the tax burden on lower and middle-income workers is eased a bit and loopholes for the super-rich be eliminated.
Judge Mathis' life story of a street youth who rose from jail to Judge has provided hope to millions who watch him on the Judge Mathis Show each day.

To Escape Self-persisted Captivity: Emphasis on Black History & Action is Essential
by H. Lewis Smith
February 2012
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On February 13, 2012, renowned actor Laurence Fishburne will narrate a PBS documentary, Slavery By Another Name. The documentary will show that slavery in America did not end in 1865 with the Emancipation Proclamation as the majority of people have been led to believe. Rather, with the federal government’s quiet complicity, slavery actually ensued for almost another 100 years with all of the evil, horror, and brutal aspects of race-hate escalating to even greater heights.
To maintain the status quo in society, the South’s judicial system was wholly reconfigured, and one of its primary purposes was to coerce African Americans to comply with the social customs and labor demands of whites by any means necessary. As such, the spirit and ways of life under slavery, as well as the inferior mentalities, also continued; and now, even at the hand of the Black community.
Whatever “education” and deformed self-image the slave master imposed upon blacks during slavery has persisted, and been handed downby Blacksthroughout the generations. The continued self-hatred and minute or unfound self awareness that permeates throughout the Black community is a direct result of 400-plus years of mind control.
The mentality or beliefs that the majority of African Americans presently and voluntarily adhere to is the same unfortunate policy of inferiority and self-hatred Blacks were forced to subscribe to when enslaved: Anyone who is convinced his or her past is empty, backward, shameful or, indeed, totally negative, will normally resist any attempt to revisit that past. Such a person will have no true identity, despise self, and have no real awareness of his/her culture and heritage. This same person will refuse to consciously participate in or relate to any cultural customs, and will resist any attempt to validate any “facts” discovered. They remain in the darkness, helpless, and dependent. The doctrine hasn’t changed one bit.
In order to correct the problem, Blacks must consciously and sub-consciously realize that what they were taught was not for their liberation, but was and still is only in the best interest of the ruling class. History translates into “his-story”the manner in which one understands or interprets history from his or her own perspective to his or her own benefit. Today, Blacks are living witnesses as to how real black history has beenby “his-story”distorted, misleading, deceptive and mind controlling.
American history teaches that slavery ended in 1865; this misinformation is a blatant example of how the truth can be and is tampered with to seemingly save face for America, “the dream country”. However, the obvious suppression of or disregard for such a critical piece of American history makes one question what other aspects of history, in general, have the people been lied to and deceived about.
Evidence all around the world suggests that Black civilizations were far more advanced than the images portrayed to the black community by the ruling class. The ruling class would have Black America believe that the Black race is limited to huts, spears and jungle life with no trace of civility, culture, organization, and self-sufficiency. Research exposes this as a gross fabrication.
Further, Black America must confront and correct the lies that have destroyed the group as a people. With the exception of the Black man’s image as presented by academics, the average African American knows very little, if anything at all, about his or her African heritage, and has, more than likely, been misinformed. The American-born black man and black woman are completely brainwashed beings who only know, recognize and comprehend or experience what their slave master has decided for them. It’s incumbent upon Black Americaas a groupto liberate their own minds.
Secular and non-secular people who have spent centuries strategically and heinously orchestrating the black community’s physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual enslavement are not going to just turn around and set Blacks free; Blacks must remove the shackles of mental enslavement themselves.
Consider a white hunter who sets out to capture a baby elephant. He approaches a baby elephant and its mother. Sensing danger, the mother charges at the hunter who raises his rifle, pulls the trigger, and kills the charging elephant. The baby elephant is captured, tranquilized, and with a cable wrapped around its neck, taken into captivity where it is tied to a post. For five years, it remained tied to that post even though it is now full grown and could have uprooted the post at any time. However, the elephant did not realize it possessed this strength as it had been trained to accept enslavement and that bondage was the norm. Finally, one day, it unintentionally broke free of the cable, and rather than scuffling off, the elephant chose to remain close to the post even though it was now free.
The elephant elected captivity, which is unnatural, because it was so accustomed to being tied down and stuck in one spot. This story is analogous to Black America’s predicament and its use of the n-word. Black Americans’ use of the n-word is a result of being conditioned, programmed and trained to carry out the bidding of a manipulative racist society.
There are many Black African Americans who really do not want or know how to be free, for with freedom come accountability and responsibility. Just as White America continued promoting slavery well after the Emancipation Proclamationa supposed hard and immediate stop to all forms of slavery, the Black community has [also] allowed the slave mentality to continue: Blacks have continued to promote and keep alive the demise of the Black community and stifled progression by use of the n-word, which was created to hold blacks in an inferior place in society. As such, this has caused learned helplessness, docility and passivity in the black community, keeping many Blacks cerebrally anesthetized no matter the extent of education attained.
Many Blacks have chosen not to move away from the post, and, frankly, that’s quite bewildering. How is it that so many in the black community have chosen to remain captive and stationary? The RIGHT mix of KNOWLEDGE, UNDERSTANDING, and WISDOM enables one to move away from that post and toward progress. These three essential components that are necessary for resurrection and empowerment are defined as:
1) Knowledge: awareness of the facts, truth, and reality. Black America must undo fables, lies and fantasies. Blacks as a people are more committed to fables, lies and fantasy than facts, truth and reality, which is a tremendous problem.
2) Understanding: comprehending the “right” knowledge, and manifesting it into action.
3) Wisdom: the optimum combination of knowledge and understanding expressed in the ability to make things happen.
Acquiring this enlightenment will automatically cause one to deviate from the norm and move away from that post or bondage. However, many remain captive because they have consciously chosen not to acknowledge and garner the elements needed for resurrection and empowerment.
Until African Americans as a group are ALL free, none are truly free. Need the name Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. be raised? Or the 2004 political incident where the Black Caucus was virtually told to be quiet and sit down by a combined show of force from the Democrat and Republican parties?
Black America has taken non-black man made doctrinesrather, white man made doctrinesas the inflicting rule and guide over and above facts and reality. Blacks have literally accepted that which does not even make sense as fact and truth.
The modern day equivalent of remaining tied to the post is to verbally acknowledge that you are a n**ger/n**ga. The Whoopi Goldbergs, Sherri Shepherds, and Byron Pitts of television land could never publicly deny the n-word and keep their coveted positions. Embracing the word assures them of acceptance. The irony of it all is that they are not feigning or doing it for showthey truly have accepted their so-called place as the n-word.
When listening to the lyrics of rap music, the n-word is used in the same context with violence, drugs, and misogyny. Rappers such as Jay Z, P. Diddy, Lil Wayne, 50 Cent, and many others have all benefited exponentially by reassuring the systemic that they are doing their part of keeping Black America in its place and tied to the post. No longer is there a need for the hooded white sheets. Black ventriloquists have voluntarily replaced the KKK , and, to be perfectly honest, are doing a far more masterful job of maintaining the mental enslavement of the Black race.
Black African Americans unhealthy willingness to self-sabotage serves as a testimony to the effectiveness of 400 years of mental abuse (mind control). To overcome! A process that never took place, must and needs to take place…DE-PROGRAMMING!
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H. Lewis Smith is the founder and president of UVCC, the United Voices for a Common Cause, Inc. (www.theunitedvoices.com); a writer for the New England Informer Online; and author of "Bury that Sucka: A Scandalous Love Affair with the N-Word". Follow him on Twitter: www.twitter.com/thescoop1



THE TOP TWELVE NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS THAT EVERY BLACK MAN SHOULD MAKE
By Rick Rowsey of the Victory Unlimited Show
February 2012
01 My Funny valentine.mp3 As another year begins, Black men are faced with just as many potential challenges as they are with potential opportunities. This is the time that many men choose to reevaluate their lives and resolve to make changes for the better. In a time where an ever-increasing number of forces seem to be aligned against black men in their quest for success, many of them have decided to make New Year's Resolutions. However, to increase their chances at accomplishing their goals and objectives for the New Year, Black men need to make their action plans as strategic and as specific as possible.
No matter how gung ho men generally are when they first make their resolutions, most are not as well prepared as they could be when it comes to fighting their way through the barriers to accomplishing their goals. However, to better equip black men for success, our most recent Victory Unlimited Show broadcast entitled "The Top Twelve New Year's Resolutions That Every Man Should Make" put forth the following list of objectives to help men boost their odds for success in the New Year:
1) Build your inner strength. Equip yourself to better face life's challenges by adopting an empowering belief system or reconnecting to your spirituality.
2) Forgive people who've done you wrong. If you spend your time slinging mud, you'll be the only one losing ground. If you hold grudges, you'll only hold yourself back. Free yourself by first learning the lesson, and then by letting things go.
3) Get healthy and stay healthy. Resolve to take better care of yourself this year than you ever have before.
4) Stop living in the past. No matter what's happened to you in the past, the best way to increase your chances for success in the future is to fully focus on what you're doing right now in the present.
5) Educate yourself. Routinely enrich your life by learning new things.
6) Join a brotherhood. Align yourself with a group of likeminded people so that you can each help each other get further in life faster.
7) Find a mentor. Follow in the footsteps of someone successful that you respect. Learn directly from someone who has already achieved whatever goal you want to achieve.
8) Avoid negativity. Stay away from toxic people and avoid as many situations that drain you of your positive energy as possible.
9) Find more ways to make money. In order to first survive, and then thrive in a tough economy, investigate creative ways to develop multiple streams of income.
10) Start a new relationship. Stop recycling bad romantic relationships with women from your past. Believe in the possibility that better romantic relationship opportunities are waiting for you in the future.
11) Enjoy your life. Life can be hard, so start making it "okay" sometimes for you to play just as hard as you work.
12) Stop making New Year's Resolutions! Resolve to start making goal-setting and goal-achieving a part of your every day life instead of just a once-a-year occurrence.
The Victory Unlimited Show is a "tongue-in-cheek", self-help show for men that's reminiscent of programs from the Golden Age of Radio. During each broadcast, the host codenamed "Victory Unlimited", answers dating, relationship, and general life questions by addressing them with a motivational, military-like zeal. "The biggest problem with making New Year's Resolutions is that it's become mostly an empty, traditional ritual." says the host. "It's time for us to stop making resolutions and to start a revolution in how we think. We need to stop thinking of deciding to make positive changes in our lives as some annual event, but rather as a nonstop mission that we're on for all 365 days of the year." For more details, visit www.victoryunlimitedshow.com
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