Study: African American Jobless Rate to Reach 25-Year High
A new study says African American unemployment is on pace to reach a twenty-five-year high. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the national African American unemployment rate will exceed 17 percent, and top 20 percent in at least five states. The poverty rate for African American children is predicted to reach as much as 50 percent, up from 34 percent in 2008.


85,000 Jobs Lost in December; Unemployment Rate at 10%
In economic news, the nation’s workers received more devastating news on Friday. Eighty-five thousand jobs were lost last month, a far higher number than analysts had projected. The official unemployment rate remained at ten percent, but that was only because 661,000 people were not counted as unemployed because they had not looked for a job in the four weeks preceding the December survey. If those people had been included in the tally, the jobless rate would have been closer to 10.4 percent. On Friday, President Obama acknowledged the latest job numbers were discouraging.

President Obama: “The jobs numbers that were released by the Labor Department...are a reminder that the road to recovery is never straight and that we have to continue to work every single day to get our economy moving again. For most Americans, and for me, that means jobs. It means whether we are putting people back to work.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports just 80 percent of men between the ages of twenty-five and fifty-four were employed in December. That’s the lowest figure ever recorded. The economy has shed more than 7.2 million jobs since the recession started in December 2007.


Number of Bankruptcies Increases by 32 Percent
In economic news, the Associated Press reports the number of Americans and businesses filing for bankruptcy jumped 32 percent last year. Over 1.4 million bankruptcy petitions were submitted, more than any year since Congress overhauled the bankruptcy laws in 2005. In Arizona, the number of bankruptcies jumped 77 percent. Bankruptcies also increased by over 50 percent in California, Wyoming and Nevada.


Judge Rules NY Fire Department Intentionally Discriminated Against Black Applicants
A federal judge has ruled the New York City Fire Department intentionally discriminated against African American applicants by continuing to use a test known to put the applicants at a disadvantage. US District Judge Nicholas Garaufis had already ruled last July the use of the tests amounted to racial discrimination. New York City has the least diverse fire department of any major city in the United States. The fire department is about 90 percent white, even though African Americans and Latinos make up the majority of the city’s population. Legal experts told the New York Times the ruling is the first in recent memory to fault a city for discriminating against a large group of people in the workplace.


Report: The 00s Was a Lost Decade for American Workers
The Washington Post reports the past decade was the worst for the US economy in modern times. There has been zero net job creation since December 1999. No previous decade going back to the 1940s had job growth of less than 20 percent. Middle-income households made less in 2008, when adjusted for inflation, than they did in 1999. And the net worth of American households has also declined when adjusted for inflation. This compares with sharp gains in every previous decade since data were initially collected in the 1950s. Wall Street also registered its first-ever negative decade on a total return basis. Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at Standard & Poor’s Equity Research, said the benchmark S&P 500 is down about ten percent over the last ten years.

Sam Stovall: "It’s a dismal decade because, whether you go back to 1900, this is the first decade in which the S&P 500 lost money when you include dividends reinvested. Even in the 1930s, we were able to eke out a ten percent total return, because we had dividend yields that ranged anywhere from five to ten percent during that ten-year period.”


Food Stamps Now Only Source of Income for 6 Million Americans
In other economic news, the New York Times reports about six million Americans receiving food stamps report they have no other income. About one in fifty Americans now lives in a household with a reported income that consists of nothing but a food stamp card.


Record 2.8M Foreclosure Notices in 2009
New figures show foreclosure notices hit an all-time high last year. According to RealtyTrac, a record 2.8 million properties received foreclosure notices in 2009, a 120 percent increase from 2007.


Percy Sutton, Malcolm X’s Former Attorney, 89, Dies
In New York, Percy Sutton has died at the age of eighty-nine. In the 1960s Sutton served as Malcolm X’s attorney. He later became one of the nation’s most prominent African American political and business leaders.


South African Poet & Activist Dennis Brutus, 85, Dies

Poet Dennis Brutus

And in South Africa, the poet, anti-apartheid activist and former political prisoner Dennis Brutus has died at the age of eighty-five.


White Supremacist Arrested for Christmas Killing in Texas
In Texas, a man with ties to a White supremacist group has been arrested on capital murder charges after he allegedly shot dead a store owner in Liberty, Texas on Christmas night. Police said the alleged killer, Stevie “Bubba” Walder, is a known White supremacist who has a large swastika tattooed on his left bicep. The victim of the shooting was identified as fifty-year-old Naushad Virani. Virani was working on Christmas so his employees could have the night off with their families. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has called on the FBI to determine whether hate crime charges should also be filed against Walder.


Effigy of Obama Found Hanging in Georgia Town
The US Secret Service is investigating an effigy of President Obama found hanging from a building in Plains, Georgia, the hometown of former President Jimmy Carter. Video footage shows a large black doll hanging from a building by a noose. The doll was hung in front of a red, white and blue sign that reads: “Plains, Georgia. Home of Jimmy Carter, our 39th President.”


ICE Officials Accused of Covering Up Immigrant Deaths in Detention
A scathing report in the New York Times reveals that federal officials used their role as overseers to prevent media from reporting deaths and abuses inside the nation’s immigration prisons. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, now admits 107 immigrants died in ICE custody since October 2003, but for years the deaths went uncounted in the public record.


Penn. Police Officers Resign After Indictments in Immigrant Killing
In the Pennsylvania town of Shenandoah, four police officers, including the town’s police chief, have resigned. In December, the police chief and two of the officers were indicted on charges that they orchestrated a cover-up of the fatal beating of Luis Ramirez, a Mexican immigrant. Ramirez died after a fight with a group of teenagers in Shenandoah. The Justice Department indicted two of the teenagers on federal hate crimes charges. The police officers and the police chief are accused of several acts, including writing false reports after hearing information implicating the teenage attackers. One of the accused officers was dating the mother of one of the teen suspects, while another officer’s son was a high school football teammate of all those involved.


California Court Issues Major Ruling on Police Use of Tasers
A federal appeals court has ruled that a California police officer can be held liable for injuries suffered by an unarmed man he tasered during a traffic stop. The Los Angeles Times reports the decision, if allowed to stand, would set a rigorous legal precedent for when police are permitted to use tasers. The ruling will also force law enforcement agencies throughout the state, and presumably the nation, to tighten their policies governing taser use. Monday’s court ruling stems from a 2005 encounter in which a police officer in Coronado, California tasered a man after a routine traffic stop.


Fox News Hires Sarah Palin
In media news, Fox News announced Monday it has hired former Alaskan governor and Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin as a commentator. Palin will appear on The O’Reilly Factor tonight.


Morgan Stanley Sued over Mortgage-Related Investments
In business news, Morgan Stanley has been sued by a Virgin Islands pension fund of defrauding investors by marketing risky mortgage-related investments that it expected to fail. The suit focuses on Morgan Stanley’s sale of collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs. According to the lawsuit, “Morgan Stanley was betting the entire investment it was promoting would fail.” Last week, the New York Times reported investigators in Congress, at the Securities and Exchange Commission and at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority have launched probes into Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms for deliberately selling these risky structured securities to clients and then betting on the securities failing.


Geithner-Led New York Fed Tried to Hide AIG Payments
Newly disclosed emails show the Federal Reserve Bank of New York asked the bailed-out insurance giant AIG to hide details on the billions of dollars it paid to banks at the height of the financial meltdown. In what some have called the “backdoor bailout,” AIG gave nearly $13 billion to Goldman Sachs and tens of billions more to other firms, including Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and several foreign banks. The newly revealed emails show the New York Fed deleted a reference in an AIG regulatory filing documenting payments to Goldman Sachs and the French bank Societe Generale. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was the head of the New York Fed at the time. In a statement, the Treasury Department said Geithner had played “no role” in the AIG secrecy.


Obama Proposes Bailout Tax on Wall Street
President Obama has proposed a new tax to recoup the bailout money handed out to large financial firms during the financial crisis.

President Obama: “We want our money back, and we’re going to get it. And that’s why I am proposing a financial crisis responsibility fee to be imposed on major financial firms until the American people are fully compensated for the extraordinary assistance they provided to Wall Street. If these companies are in good enough shape to afford massive bonuses, they are surely in good enough shape to afford paying back every penny to taxpayers.”

The “Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee” would collect an estimated $90 billion over the next ten years from fifty firms. The proposal will apply only to financial firms with over $50 billion in assets, exempting small or community banks.


Wall Street to Pay Out Record $145B in Compensation
Obama’s announcement came as the Wall Street Journal reported the nation’s thirty-eight largest financial firms will pay out a record $145.85 billion in compensation for 2009. The figure marks an 18 percent increase over 2008 and a six percent increase over 2007.


Federal Reserve Made $45 Billion in 2009
In other banking news, the Washington Post reports the Federal Reserve made a record $45 billion profit in 2009. Unlike most government agencies, the Fed funds itself from its own operations and returns its profits to the Treasury.


Study Links Monsanto GM Corn to Organ Failure
A new study claims to have uncovered new health effects caused by genetically modified corn from the agricultural giant Monsanto. The International Journal of Biological Sciences says GM corn helped cause organ damage in rats. The study’s author called Monsanto’s GM methods “a very serious mistake, dramatic for public health.”


Regulators Accuse BoA of Hiding Merrill Losses
Federal regulators, meanwhile, have sued Bank of America for allegedly hiding billions of dollars in losses at Merrill Lynch before acquiring the firm in December 2008. The suit follows a separate case over Bank of America’s alleged failure to disclose billions in bonuses at Merrill Lynch paid out after the acquisition. That case is set to go to trial later this year.


1M Somalis Face Starvation as WFP Suspends Food Aid
The United Nations’ main food aid agency has suspended assistance in southern Somalia over what it calls unfair demands by the militant al-Shabaab group. On Tuesday, World Food Programme spokesperson Peter Smerdon said al-Shabaab’s demands had brought relief operations to a halt.

Peter Smerdon: “We are very concerned about the people of Somalia who need assistance, but we simply couldn’t continue after a spate of escalating demands, harassment and problems with armed groups in the south. So we have temporarily closed about five offices. We’ve pulled the staff out. We’ve pulled out virtually all the equipment. And we need security to return. If we are assured of security and we see evidence that there is security for us to operate, we will go back as soon as possible, because obviously people are going to go hungry.”

Up to a million southern Somalia residents face starvation as a result of the food aid suspension.


Obama: US Intel Could Have Prevented Failed Jetliner Attack
President Obama has faulted the intelligence community for failing to act on information that could have prevented the failed Christmas Day jetliner attack. The suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was not added to a terrorism watch list despite information linking him to militants known to be plotting attacks on the United States. On Tuesday, Obama said US intelligence agencies had failed to “connect the dots.”

President Obama: “It now turns out that our intelligence community knew of other red flags that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula sought to strike not only American targets in Yemen, but the United States itself. And we had information that this group was working with an individual who was known—who we now know was in fact the individual involved in the Christmas attack. The bottom line is this: The US government had sufficient information to have uncovered this plot and potentially disrupt the Christmas Day attack, but our intelligence community failed to connect those dots, which would have placed the suspect on the no-fly list.”


14 Nations to Face Stricter Airport Screening
The Obama administration announced Sunday citizens of fourteen countries will be subjected to intense screening at airports worldwide, including full body pat-down and physical inspection of property. The list of countries targeted are Afghanistan, Algeria, Cuba, Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. All passengers flying from these countries will also face increased inspection. Nawar Shora of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee criticized the new rules. He said, “This is extreme and very dangerous. All of a sudden people are labeled as being related to terrorism just because of the nation they are from.” Some advocates of racial profiling have suggested even more extreme measures.

Retired Air Force General Tom McInerney on Fox News: “We have got to go to very, very strict screening, and we have to use profiling. And I mean be very serious and harsh about the profiling. If you are an eighteen- to twenty-eight-year-old Muslim man, then you should be strip-searched. And if we don’t do that, there’s a very high probability we’re going to lose an airliner.”


Israeli Court Rules Palestinians Can Drive on “Apartheid Road”
Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled that Israel can no longer bar Palestinians from driving on a major highway that cuts through the West Bank. Route 443 was dubbed “the apartheid road” by many Palestinians and their supporters. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel praised the court ruling. A group spokesperson said, "We hope this will be the end of the segregated roads.” Non-Israeli cars have been prohibited on the highway since 2002. It is unclear if the ruling will apply to other Israel-only roads in the West Bank.


Google to End China Censorship
The internet giant Google is reconsidering its operations in China after discovering what it calls a major cyber attack originating there. In a statement, Google said it will stop censoring search results in China and may leave the country entirely.


Brother: CIA Bomber “Changed” by Israeli Assault on Gaza
The family of the suicide bomber who attacked a CIA base in Afghanistan last week has revealed new details about his background. In an interview with the New York Times, a brother of Humam Khalil al-Balawi said their family had last heard from Balawi when he was volunteering as a medical doctor to treat wounded Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The brother says Balawi was “changed” by Israel’s three-week assault on Gaza that killed over 1,300 Palestinians.


Miep Gies Dies at 100
And Miep Gies, the last surviving link to the Nazi Holocaust diarist Anne Frank, has died. She was 100 years old. Gies helped hide Frank and her family for over two years during the Second World War. Gies hid and preserved Frank’s diaries and later gave them to her father Otto, the only surviving member of the Frank family.


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