Links:
The Black Star Project's website:
Black Star Journal:
Become a Member:
Make a donation:
Like us on Facebook: 
Follow us on Twitter:
|
|
President Trump wants to replace
food stamps with
'Blue Apron-type program'
|
|
|
Photo provded by The Black Star Project
|
February 13, 2018
The Trump administration is thinking inside the box.
President Donald Trump wants to drastically scale back food stamps and replace them with a
"food box" delivery program
- like Blue Apron.
Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, told reporters on Monday about the plan by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to redesign the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) as "America's Harvest Box." Under the plan, more than 16 million households would have half of their benefits go toward the food box delivery program.
"What we do is propose that, for folks who are on food stamps - part, not all - part of their benefits come in the actual sort of - and I don't want to steal somebody's copyright - but a Blue Apron-type program where you actually receive the food instead of receive the cash," Mulvaney said.
Blue Apron is a company that sells weekly meal service kits that come with ingredients and recipes that are then cooked at home by the customer. Three meals a week for a family of four comes to about $140 in the New York area. Among the offerings are beef medallions and scallion salsa verde and salmon and dukkah-spiced vegetables, according to Blue Apron's
website. (Blue Apron declined to comment.)
Chicago-based
Top Box Foods also runs a similar program - but rather than meal kits, it delivers pre-selected boxes of healthy, affordable groceries. The company was founded by Chris Kennedy, the son of Ethel and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, in 2012, and accepts SNAP benefits to pay for the boxes, according to its website.
Under the government's current program, food stamp recipients use a
payment card, similar to a debit card, to buy food, and the USDA has
strict rules about what can be bought with the benefits. Alcohol, household items and pet food, among other items, cannot be purchased.
The Trump administration proposal could shake up the country's largest program designed to battle domestic hunger issues. The proposed budget, released Monday, would gut SNAP benefits by $17.2 billion in 2019, about
22 percent of the program's total cost last year. USDA claims the new plan would save $129.2 billion over 10 years.
Sonny Perdue, the agriculture secretary, called the new proposal a "bold, innovative approach," noting that the food placed in the box would be grown by American farmers and producers.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Back To The Future
with Government Cheese
|
|
Lerone Bennett Joins the Ancestors
Lerone Bennett, Jr.
1928 to 2018
 Writer and social historian Lerone Bennett, Jr. served as the executive editor of Ebony for almost forty years. His written work deftly explores the history of race relations in the United States as well as the current environment in which African Americans strive for equality. Bennett was born on October 17, 1928, in Clarksdale, Mississippi, to Lerone and Alma (Reed) Bennett. When Bennett was young, his family moved to Jackson, Mississippi, and it was here, while attending Jackson's public schools, that Bennett's interest in journalism was initiated.
Bennett attended Morehouse College, earning a B.A. in 1949. He has always considered Morehouse as the center of his academic development. After graduating, Bennett formally entered the world of journalism as a reporter for the now defunct Atlanta Daily World. He became the city editor for the magazine and worked there until 1953, when he began his work as an associate editor at Jet magazine in Chicago, Illinois. In 1954, Bennett became an associate editor at Ebony and he was promoted to senior editor of the magazine in 1958. Since then, his comprehensive articles have become one of the magazine's literary hallmarks.
A series of articles originally published in Ebony resulted in Bennett's first book, a seminal piece of work, Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America, 1619-1962. The book, with its comprehensive examination of the history of African Americans in the United States, gave Bennett the reputation of a first-class popular historian. In his eight subsequent books, Bennett has continued to document the historical forces shaping the Black experience in the United States. His other works include: What Manner of Man?, Pioneers In Protest and The Shaping of Black America.
Bennett has received numerous awards such as the Literature Award of the Academy of Arts and Letters, Book of the Year Award from Capital Press Club and the Patron Saints Award from the Society of Midland Authors. He has served as advisor and consultant to several national organizations and commissions, including the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. Bennett's articles, short stories and poems have been translated into five languages.
Click Here to Read Other Biographies from
The Historymakers.
|
|
The Black Star Project
sends our condolences to the
families, friends and classmates of the shooting victims in Parkland, Florida
17 killed
15 wounded
Thousands emotionally scarred
"President Trump, you can stop the guns from getting into these children's hands.
This is not fair to our families that our children go to school and HAVE TO GET KILLED! I've just spent the last two hours putting the burial arrangements for my daughter's funeral--who is 14! President Trump please do something!"
- Lori Alhadeff
Click Here to See and Hear Full Video Clip of Lori Alhadeff's Plea.
|
"Poor Black families can work hard 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for the next 300 years. They will never catch up to most middle and upper-middle income White families. This system is not designed for them to catch up. In fact, it is designed for them to stay behind, no matter how hard, how smart and how much they work. Without a comprehensive system redesign, poor Black families might as well be slaves!"
Phillip Jackson - The Black Star Project
-----------------------------------------------------------
The Trump Budget:
More Poverty in America
February 13, 2018
Food swiped off the table for millions of men, women, and kids. Low-income families left out in the cold amid an affordable housing crisis of historic proportions. Critical health insurance stripped from children, seniors, people with disabilities, and low-wage workers. State governments in utter fiscal disarray. Above all, more poverty, suffering, and homelessness; less opportunity and justice; and worsened racial and economic inequality.
Is this the country that most Americans want? According to
recent polling, the answer is no.
Yet this is the harsh vision set out by the Trump Administration's proposed FY 2019 budget released yesterday. While the outline is merely a proposal, and does not have immediate bearing on
the recent bipartisan spending deal
, it represents the administration's latest attack on low-income people and people of color-and it must be swiftlyly and categorically rejected.
The Trump Administration's budget proposes to pay for tax cuts for the ultra-rich on the backs of low-income and working people.
The Trump Administration's budget, if implemented, would cause massive suffering. Among the budget's measures, it:
- Proposes repealing the Affordable Care Act and slashing Medicaid and Medicare, taking health insurance from tens of millions of low-income people;
- Radically restructures and guts the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by roughly 30 percent, promising to send hunger soaring;
- Cuts already-meager basic cash assistance for low-income families and people with disabilities, threatening to increase deep and extreme poverty;
- Raises rents on and slashes housing assistance for low-income families during one of our country's most dire affordable housing crises;
- Totally eliminates the Low-income Heating Assistance Program as well as numerous other block grants to states that support crucial anti-poverty efforts, like Meals on Wheels for seniors;
- Aims to undermine the independence of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a key federal agency tasked with protecting everyday consumers from financial exploitation;
- Defunds the Legal Services Corporation, taking access to lawyers away from millions of low-income people and depriving them of the ability to assert their legal and civil rights just as the Administration itself retreats from enforcing those rights;
- Strengthens and expands ineffective and costly "work requirements"associated with food, housing, and medical assistance;
- Undermines employment opportunities and outcomes for low-income adults by gutting supports and programs that make it possible for them to pursue and maintain work;
- Continues the Trump Administration's attack on immigrant communities through increased funding for deportation efforts and a wall along the southern border, while ignoring the some 800,000 Dreamers whose DACA protection was recklessly and cruelly rescinded last fall;
- Shifts massive costs to and fiscally paralyzes state governments by slashing and capping federal funding for Medicaid.
The Trump budget is part of a sustained attack on low-income people and people of color in this country.
Budgets are profoundly moral.
|
Proposed Tax Reform Plan Will Destroy Black America
The proposed Tax Reform Plan will destroy Black America. At best, this Plan is the reincarnation of trickle-down economics, which never worked. At worst, it is a kind of neo-slavery and works as an ethnic cleansing of Black people in America. Either way, it is something that Black people in America cannot afford.
Think about the worst racial policies of America. Chattel slavery. Jim Crow segregation. Apartheid. Share-cropping. Mass incarceration. Ethnic cleansing. Education, housing and economic discrimination. Wealth gaps and health gaps. Now think of a way to re-institute the best elements of all these putrid ideas and you have the 2017-2018 proposed Tax Reform Plan!
The proposed Tax Reform Plan 2017-2018 is actually a re-fighting of the U.S. Civil War that was previously fought between 1861 and 1865. The major issues of that war were the South continuing to hold Black people as slaves and whether slavery would be allowed to spread to new territories.
Today, we have the Civil War 2.0 with many of the same southern states that lost the first Civil War initiating a Tax Reform Plan that would effectively, long term, disenfranchise most Black people in America. This time, the South plans to win! The negative impact of this proposed Tax Reform Plan, as it is being proffered by the Republican-controlled House, Senate and White House, will be that of 100 Hurricane Katrina's on Black communities across America.
This proposed tax plan for Black America is like the frog put in a pot of cold water under a low-burning flame so that it doesn't jump out of the pot, but as the heat is turned up, the frog is slowly cooked. The early years of the proposed Tax Reform Plan would give most Blacks in America some tax relief. The later years of the proposed Tax plan would "cook" Black people in America!
Charles D. Ellison, a Washington correspondent for The Philadelphia Tribune, says, "Not only is Black America the least likely to see a tax cut, but it's the most likely to see future tax increases, shredded safety nets and a flurry of fines and fees to make up the difference." He continues, "Right now, at this very moment, the single biggest threat to the group of people already in a compromised position because of their race is the Congressional Republicans' tax-reform plan. Not the sound of the police. Not lead in your water and not a jail cell."
How will the proposed Tax Reform Plan impact Black America?
- Greatly reduce Medicaid by $5.3 trillion over ten years
- Trigger $400 billion in Medicare cuts over ten years, including $25 billion in the first year
- Greatly reduce food stamps by 30 percent
- Eliminate the ability to write off student loan interest
- Dramatically reduce college Pell Grants
- Significantly reduce the number of Head Start slots by 200,000
- Cut K-12 Education funding by 30 percent
- Eliminate rental assistance to nearly 1 million households
- Cut job training by 40 percent
- Exacerbate the wealth disparity between white and nonwhite Americans
- Put median Black household wealth on a path to hit zero by 2053
- Create an additional $1.5 trillion deficit that would force the gutting of social service programs for decades to come
This proposed tax plan is as close to the return of slavery that Black people have been faced with since the first Civil War. Most Black leadership and progressive leadership are asleep on this aspect of the proposed Tax Reform Plan. Many government operatives, foundations, universities and corporate-sector leaders have aligned and seemingly conspired to destroy the progress made by Black people over the past 152 years under the guise of Tax Reform.
The proposed Tax Reform Plan will destroy Black America. At best, this Plan is the reincarnation of trickle-down economics, which never worked. At worst, it is a kind of neo-slavery and works as an ethnic cleansing of Black people in America. Either way, it is something that Black people in America cannot afford.
Phillip Jackson is the Founder and Chairman of the Board of the The Black Star Project
|
|
The Black Star Project's
Public Policy Luncheon Series
featuring
George S. Wright
Director of Community Relations for Citibank's Global Consumer Group
Topic: The Economic Siege of Black America
12:00 noon
Wednesday, February 28, 2018
The Black Star Project
3509 South King Drive
Chicago, Illinois
This Luncheon Includes:
- A presentation by Mr. Wright
- Lunch provided by a Black-owned restaurant or caterer firm
- Sponsorship of a community not-for-profit
- Networking with top Chicago business people
- Free admission to two college students
Cost: Members - $35.00 General Public - $45.00 Please RSVP to 773.285.9600 by 2/25/2018. Free parking available in the rear. Short taxi ride from downtown Chicago. |
Blacks in America have about a $1.3 trillion gross national income. Only 2% of that money, about $26 billion, is re-circulated in the Black community. The Black Star Project is working to change this narrative!
Dear Supporter of Progress,
1) Become at least a $50 member of The Black Star Project.
2) Receive a "Circulate Black Dollars in Black Communities" stamp.
4) Encourage all of your family and friends to do the same.
6) Think to shop with a Black business, professional, contractor, tradesman or vendor first, and then shop with others if you must.
7) Help set up networks, directories and list of Black vendors in your area.
8) Honor the Covenant between Black consumers and Black businesses.
9) Teach Black youth financial literacy and how to shop with Black companies.
10) Help us raise the amount of money re-circulated in the Black community from 2% to 4%, an additional $26 billion, in 2018.
Because of support from people like you, The Black Star Project will be able to manage this program for the entire year. This is how we get our young Black men to turn away from a life of violence and despair, and move towards employment, entrepreneurship, business ownership and community building.
No more waiting for federal, state or municipal government. No more waiting on foundations. No more waiting for institutions of higher education. We must take our destiny into our hands. Your support is crucial to helping solve the problems in our communities.
Please become a member of The Black Star Project and make a difference in our communities. With your support, we will experience great success in 2018 and beyond.
Just click the orange DONATE NOW button (or CLICK HERE) to make your investment in the future of our race!
Sincerely,
Phillip Jackson
Chairman of the Board of Directors
773.285.9600
P.S. You may also donate by sending a check or money order to
The Black Star Project, 3509 South King Dr. Suite 2B, Chicago, IL 60653. Make all checks and money orders should be payable to
"The Black Star Project". Thank you so much for your generosity! All investments are deductible to the extent allowed by 501c3 law.
|
|
| |
| |
|
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/58677555/shutterstock_199593269.0.jpg)
