When Annise Parker ran for mayor of Houston, she had an agenda. She was driven by personal motives. She says she wanted anyone to be able to look at Houston and know it was a well run city. She wanted to make Houston the best it could possibly be. This was personally important to her.

“I do have an agenda,” she said. “I have an agenda for the city and you can tell what my agenda is by what my transition teams are looking at in this first two months of office. I have actually one big transition team with five subgroups looking at METRO. I have one transition team working at public works and particularly how we do infrastructure projects in the city of Houston. I have a transition team looking at neighborhood protection and how we can do a better job at taking down derelict buildings and removing neighborhood nuisances. I have a transition team looking at permitting and I finally have a large transition team looking at out W/MBE program for the city of Houston. I want to streamline it I want to improve it. I want to push more contracting opportunities out for small and minority businesses. And the second of the really big transition teams has been looking at housing and all aspects of the housing department. I mean that’s my agenda, nuts and bolts, just bread and butter issues.”

   The African American News&Issues endorses Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee for re-election to the 18th Congressional District.  Jackson Lee has been good for our community for many reasons and we need to return her as our voice in Washington.

   Congresswoman Jackson Lee has been at the forefront of bringing jobs and federal funds to her district and the general Houston area.  Jackson Lee has won 125 grants totaling $351,000 from the federal stimulus bill for Congressional District 18.  This is the fourth-largest amount of funds brought to a district by a Texas Member of Congress.

The City of Houston tends to over regulate. Understandably, the city must regulate from time to time for health and safety reasons.
Even these interventions should be a limited, measured approach with broad substantive input from the citizens and businesses being impacted.

Today, businesses and citizens are strapped with too many taxes, fees, and permitting requirements.
Why is this so? Well, the answer can be found in one word – “spending.” Spending is the single part of the city’s financial equation that is almost exclusively controlled by the city. We try to do a number of wonderful things in our great city which are good.

NAACP Units in 11 states and six metropolitan areas are gearing up to launch the 2010 “Yes We Count” campaign on Feb. 12, a national grassroots movement designed to spread the word about the importance of the 2010 Census and to motivate residents in their communities to complete and return their 2010 Census questionnaire.

With the “Tea Party Convention” concluding in Nashville with wall to wall coverage by the mainstream media, it is clear that the right continues to outmaneuver the left in terms of capturing the limelight to promote the conservative cause. One has to admit that the concept of having a “Tea Party Express” was a brilliant stroke which rightwing talk show hosts and Fox News could propagandize to the hilt. The cold fact is, for all of the intellectual capital and organizing genius, there has been no equivalent concept or response from a liberal/ left/progressive “movement” that is disgruntled, disjointed, disoriented and ineffective. If a return to power of the conservatives in 2010 is to be blocked, there must be far more innovative thinking, meaningful messaging and creative organizing on the left.

The Republican and Democratic Parties have finally found something to agree on. Americans are angry. The Republicans say they know the answer. Just put them in power. The Democrats say they know the answer. Just keep them in power. Isn’t it partisan vanity that made Americans so angry in the first place?

It’s dangerous, psychologically speaking, to be angry but have no productive way to express it. That is the psychological and political bind that most Americans find themselves in. And, it is also the catalyst for so many millions of Americans – 40% in some polls – becoming political independents.

This “breakout” phenomenon has been gathering steam for nearly 20 years. Movements come of age as leaders with diverse, sometimes divergent, visions challenge their movement to follow a particular path.

In part 3 of Fighting for Change, Congressman Al Green explains appropriations and how the 9th District he serves will benefit from them.

After Republican Scott Brown defeated Democrat Martha Coakley for the seat formerly held by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, the mood in  America tended to suggest that Americans were fed up with President Obama and his administration’s policies. After his State of the Union address last week, an instant poll conducted by CBS News and Knowledge Networks found that 83 percent of speech watchers approve Obama’s proposals, while 17 percent disapprove them. It also revealed that 70 percent of speech watchers think that Obama shares the same priorities for the country as they do, although 57 percent thought so beforehand.

From the stern way that President Obama dismissed the Congressional Black Caucus last month, you’d think the CBC had insisted that every last dollar of job-creation money go to African-Americans. And from the way some conservative pundits responded (columnist Michelle Malkin, for instance, called it a “shake down”), you’d think the CBC had demanded that the Secret Service round up White folks and force them to empty their bank accounts and hand the money over to Black folks.
The CBC made the very reasonable suggestion that 10 percent of the stimulus be targeted to the poorest urban areas, where so many African-Americans live. Given that African-Americans are about 13 percent of the US population, 10 percent is a pretty modest request.

President Barack Obama signs an Emergency Declaration
for the State of Arkansas in the Oval Office, and also
signed a declaration for the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
He also announced that the American public will be invited
to nominate candidates for the Citizens Medal, the nation’s
second highest civilian award.
                                   White House photo by Pete Souza

WASHINGTON, DC —President Barack Obama announced that the American public will be invited to nominate candidates for the Citizens Medal, the nation’s second highest civilian award.  For over 40 years, the Presidential Citizens Medal has recognized Americans who have “performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens.” Past recipients have included some of America’s most respected public figures including Colin Powell, Bob Dole and Muhammad Ali but also everyday heroes like Oseola McCarty, a washerwoman who left her entire life savings to establish a scholarship fund for students in need.

Political pundits are already hailing the demise of President Obama’s plan to extend insurance coverage to 37 million uninsured Americans as the collapse of a dream. The era in which cynicism about government can be mistaken for sound policy on governing should be over.