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    Inside Trump's wildly exaggerated 'help' for black voters

    Terry H. Schwadron, DCReport @ RawStory
    October 11, 2020

    Thanks for your support!

    This article was paid for by reader donations to Raw Story Investigates.

    Trump speaks to Historically Black Colleges & Universities (screen grab)

    This article was paid for by Raw Story subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.

    Terry H. Schwadron, DCReport @ RawStory

    As part of every campaign speech – and in that single, awful debate – Donald Trump works in a reference to helping Black voters. Specifically, he cites lower unemployment numbers than in the years before his presidency and the introduction of “opportunity” zones for investment in specified urban neighborhoods.


    Actually, when you look at these opportunity zones, the investments are spotty, the job gains are negligible and they serve primarily as a write-off opportunity for wealthy investors to avoid federal capital gains taxes.

    A Politico examination of the program found that there is less than these vaunted programs showed than promoted by Donald Trump looking for ways to show that he has been the most beneficial sponsor of programs for the Black community since Abraham Lincoln. That is his urban mantra.

    Opportunity zones have actually attracted slightly fewer new jobs than areas that were eligible for the zone program, but not selected for it.

    What Trump claims is that this  anti-poverty program has attracted “$100 billion of new investment . . . into 9,000 of our most distressed neighborhoods” and created “countless jobs.”

    Now even the White House Council of Economic Advisers says it is closer to $75 billion in private investment since December, 2017. Yet independent sources told Politico it is between 2½ and seven times too high. They said there have been investments between $10 million and $30 million. Since the program was set up with no reporting rules, there is no way to know.

    The 60  Minutes television program talked with owners of benefitting businesses, who said the claims of added jobs are figments of presidential imagination. They said existing businesses have been helped, but to the tune of adding say tens of jobs each.

    In other words, the Trump claims are not wrong – just way overstated.

    Attracting investors

    Opportunity zones were created in December 2017 to attract investors, giving them the chance for tax avoidance if they re-invested in funds concentrating on businesses in or abutting Census tracts designated as high- or low-poverty areas.

    Politico found that to date, these opportunity zones have mostly benefited neighborhoods already on the upswing and middle-class renters. The opportunity zone program has no job guarantees and no mechanism that requires projects to benefit any poor person. Indeed, much of the money has gone towards building luxury apartments, hotels and office towers – showing that the main beneficiaries are, well, wealthy rather than poor.

    A recent study suggests the opportunity zones have actually attracted slightly fewer new jobs than areas that were eligible for the zone program, but not selected for it. The Economic Innovation Group looked at Cleveland, which is home to half of the publicly announced opportunity zone projects in Ohio. Interviews with the developers show that opportunity zone funding was not essential to making the projects happen, since they were already underway.  

    One example cited was Kevin Wojton, who bought an abandoned building to convert it into a rock-climbing gym, yoga studio and tech nonprofit with a bank loan and now his own investment of $100,000 for which he gets a tax write-off. Total job impact: 50 to 75 temporary construction jobs and 15 to 25 permanent jobs in an area now starting to boom. It has two public housing projects nearby, qualifying it.

    In other words, who’s benefiting most? Real estate developers like Donald Trump.

    Election fodder

    Joe Biden has criticized opportunity zones for subsidizing too many “high-return projects, like luxury apartments.” He’s proposed including incentives for investors and developers to work with community organizations and build projects with social benefits.

    More affordable housing would be one such focus, and there are examples of investors using the program to build apartments with variable rents, but mostly housing for middle-class tenants rather than the poor.

    Would these have come about without the opportunity zones? Experts say philanthropic funds and participation by important neighbors like hospitals or a good-sized employer may have done so as well. The issue seems to be to get the attention of investors – which is where the tax incentives come in.

    Ned Hill, an economic development professor at Ohio State University told Politico that neither the climbing gym apartments for medical residents will “affect the lives of low-income people in any major way.” Yet city halls and chambers of commerce praise the zones, Hill says, because they can add to old industrial cities’ tax bases by helping some projects “become bankable.”

    Tax credits don’t assure that poor areas will become economically viable, but they may extend the boundaries of adjoining built-up areas.

    Housing and real development in economically deprived areas will require more direct government intervention – you know, just the kind of thing that Donald Trump calls socialism.

    Until then, take the claims of success with opportunity zones with a huge grain of salt.

    This article was paid for by Raw Story subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.

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    Raw Story is independent. You won’t find mainstream media bias here. Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Invest with us in the future. Make a one-time contribution to Raw Story Investigates, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you.

    Report typos and corrections to: corrections@rawstory.com.
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    Should Trump be allowed back on social media?

    Presidential historian lays out the reasons why George Floyd’s death sealed Trump’s fate as a one-term president

    Alex Henderson, AlterNet
    April 17, 2021

    Historian Jon Meacham is great at explaining how modern events fit into the big picture and how events of the past offer insights on the present, and he did exactly that when — during an April 16 appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" — he weighed in on Derek Chauvin's trial and far-right evangelical Pat Robertson's response to it.

    Chauvin is the Minneapolis police officer who has faced murder charges because of his role in the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020. The defense rested its case in Chauvin's trial on April 15, and Robertson — the long-time host of "The 700 Club" and founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network — shocked viewers by being highly critical of Chauvin and citing him as a glaring example of someone who never should have been in police work. Robertson is a very divisive figure who is disliked by many liberals and progressives as well as right-wing libertarians, but his comments on Chauvin have been applauded by some of his most vehement critics.

    Meacham, an Episcopalian, said of the 91-year-old Robertson, "If somebody does something right, you welcome him — and you welcome it." And Meacham stressed that the videos of Chauvin's knee on Floyd's neck were shocking even to Robertson.

    Noting Robertson's influence on the Republican Party, Meacham explained, "Robertson was kind of the official embodiment of the rise of the Religious Right. I think it began with the school prayer decision in 1962. It was slow in developing. A lot of White evangelicals stayed out of politics in the mid-1960s because they were uncomfortable with civil rights, which was a space that was clearly associated with the Black church."

    The historian told "Morning Joe" hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski that Floyd's death intensified a "conversation" that Americans have been having for generations — a "conversation on race" — and served as a painful reminder that "systemic racism exists" in the United States and "police reforming is necessary." And Meacham also argued that Floyd's death led to the end of Donald Trump's presidency.

    A week after Floyd's death, on June 1, 2020, nonviolent protesters in Washington, D.C.'s Lafayette Square were demanding justice for him when they were violently removed by police so that Trump and his allies could walk from the White House to St. John's Episcopal Church — where Trump gave a speech and had his much maligned "Bible photo-op."

    That day, Meacham argued, sealed Trump's fate in the 2020 presidential election and convinced millions of Americans and "a lot of White people" to vote against Trump and reject "a culture of White supremacy."

    "The death of George Floyd, in many ways — if you look back on the year of 2020 — in a lot of ways, Lafayette Square, the events that unfolded in that terrible period really brought home to people…. that the Trump era had come to manifest many, many of our worst impulses," Meacham told Scarborough and Brzezinski. "I have a theory that in the national mind, to some extent, Joe Biden kind of became president-elect during Lafayette Square."


    Morning Joe 4/16/2021 6AM | MSNBC Breaking News Today April 16, 2021 www.youtube.com

    WATCH: Man arrested with AK-47 in Times Square subway got a COVID test first

    Bob Brigham
    April 16, 2021

    On Friday, New York City Police arrested a man in a subway station who was allegedly carrying an assault rifle.

    "A teenager from Ohio was arrested after being found with an unloaded semi-automatic rifle and ammunition in a bag while at a busy midtown subway station," News 4 reported, citing law enforcement officials. "The man, identified by several law enforcement sources as Saadiq Teague, was apprehended by officers at the subway station in Times Square around 12:45 p.m. Friday near the A/C/E line, the officials said."

    Adam Harding gave new details during the station's 11 pm report. It turns out that the suspects father was killed by police in Ohio only weeks ago and the suspect document getting a COVID-19 test prior to his arrest.

    NYPD Police Commissioner Dermot Shea identified the alleged firearm as an AK-47.

    Watch:

    Times Square www.youtube.com

    Sharon Osbourne gives first interview to Bill Maher -- and of course the talk is on 'cancel culture'

    Bob Brigham
    April 16, 2021

    Sharon Osbourne on Friday sat down for her first extended TV interview since leaving the CBS show "The Talk" last month under a cloud of scandal.

    Instead of being interviewed by a reporter, Osbourne chose to be interviewed by HBO "Real Time" comedian Bill Maher. Kellyanne Conway made the same choice in January.

    Osbourne had been accused of referring to then-co-host Julue Chen as "Wonton" and "slanty eyes." She also reportedly referred to former co-host Sara Gilbert as "p*ssy eater" and "fish eater."

    The problems got worse when Osbourne defended Piers Morgan following his highly controversial comments on Megan Markle and the British Royal Family.

    "I am with you," Osbourne said. "I stand by you. People forget that you're paid for your opinion and that you're just speaking your truth."

    The problem is, Morgan's "truth" struck many as being a racist opinion.

    Morgan resigned from "Good Morning Britain" and Osbourne ended up leaving "The Talk."

    "See, they still love you," Maher said as she entered the stage and asked how she was doing.

    "I'm angry, I'm hurt," Osbourne said. "I'm a fighter."

    Although neither were fired, resigning was close enough for Maher, who framed the situation as one of "cancel culture" instead of racism. Maher has been on the topic for months in his crusade against accountability.

    "So he was called a racist and lost his job and you were called a racist and lost your job," Maher summarized. "Do I have it right?"

    "You've got it right, that's exactly how it went," Osbourne replied.

    Maher said the criticism Osbourne as he described it sounded "insane."

    The host suggested that the British Royal Family might not be racist, just "cold to everybody."

    And then the conversation shifted to why Morgan had viewed one of Osbourne's breasts.

    Maher mentioned the "Asian slur, lesbian slur" but did not mention what Osbourne was alleged to said. At which point Osbourne deployed the "women are bitches" defense and said it was just "disgruntled ladies."

    As Maher continued to rant about holding people accountable, he shouted, "I don't need re-education!"

    Maher also bragged about getting Osbourne's first interview, even though he is known for asking softball questions while focusing on his pet peeves like so-called "cancel cancel."

    Watch:


    Osbourne www.youtube.com


     
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