Statement of Ralph B. Everett, Esq., President and CEO, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, on the Death of John Payton, President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.

We mourn the death of civil rights champion John Payton. As President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), he was a tireless and enormously effective advocate in the struggle to advance voting rights and to eliminate discrimination. Even before joining LDF, John had firmly established himself as one of the legal community’s leading lights and as a courageous leader in the effort to help our country live up to its promise of equal justice and opportunity for all.  He was a friend and mentor to many in the civil rights and legal communities. We join them in remembering John’s many contributions to building a better America, and we express our deepest sympathies to his family.

WASHINGTON, DC—Wilhelmina A. Leigh, Ph.D., Senior Research Associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, has been named to the TIAA-CREF Institute Fellows Program. The TIAA-CREF Institute is a thought leader and model for knowledge-building and public engagement on lifetime financial security, retirement planning, and organizational success in higher education and the charitable and public sectors.

TIAA-CREF Institute Fellows are prominent researchers, scholars, policy analysts, and senior leaders from higher education and the charitable and public sectors. Fellows work with the Institute to examine strategic issues, conduct objective research and help inform decision-making relevant to the business of higher education and lifelong financial security.

“We are delighted that the TIAA-CREF Institute has recognized Dr. Leigh and her work on asset building and retirement security issues by extending her this honor,” said Ralph B. Everett, President and CEO of the Joint Center. “And we look forward to the new opportunities for collaboration and research that her association with the Institute will provide.”

Dr.  Leigh’s work at the Joint Center has included analyzing asset building programs, the Social Security system and retirement saving preparedness.

We were saddened to learn of the death of Congressman Donald M. Payne, a former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus who holds the distinction of being the first African American to be elected to Congress from New Jersey.

Congressman Payne was a true champion of the American ideal that anyone who works hard should be able to achieve their dreams.  A former teacher, he dedicated his life to opening doors for young people to find opportunity and success, as evidenced by his efforts to bring higher education within reach of more people.  And he sought to leverage the power and prestige of the United States for the purpose of helping the world’s least fortunate escape grinding poverty, conflict and disease.

In serving his constituents and all his fellow Americans with such distinction for so many years, he was a shining example of the very best in public service.  He will be greatly missed.

Dr. Wilhelmina Leigh speaks at an event entitled The Super Committee and Social Security, held by the National Academy of Social Insurance on September 16, 2011.

Slides from her presentation can be found here.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies released the following statement after Congress passed and sent President Obama legislation to extend the payroll tax cut and long-term unemployment benefits and authorize wireless spectrum auctions that will help pay for them. The President has said he will sign it:

The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies applauds President Obama and Congress for enacting legislation that will simultaneously restructure the nation’s wireless spectrum and extend the payroll tax cut and long-term unemployment benefits.

The African American and Latino communities experience joblessness at disproportionately high rates. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in January 2012, 13.6 percent of African Americans and 10.5 percent of Hispanics were unemployed, as compared to 8.3 percent overall unemployment and 7.4 percent unemployment for whites. While this is partially an indicator of the need to ensure that all Americans have the skills that will allow them to compete in an intensely competitive job market, unemployment benefits provide Americans with the support they need while they are learning new skills or looking for work.

The extension of the payroll tax cut also helps to address significant earning disparities between the races. Last year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that “Hispanics and African Americans have considerably lower earnings than Asians and whites.” In 2010, median weekly full-time earnings were $611 for blacks and $535 for Hispanics compared to $765 for whites and $855 for Asians. The payroll tax cut will allow weekly earnings to be slightly more than they would be without the tax cut. This extra money can be used to purchase basic necessities which will help stimulate the economy and potentially create more jobs that pay more.

We further commend President Obama and Congress for authorizing the Federal Communications Commission to conduct spectrum auctions to help pay for these benefits and help solve the nation’s spectrum shortage. The wireless broadband services and applications markets have grown exponentially in recent years. People of color are leading the way in that growth. According to Nielsen, 45 percent of Hispanics, 45 percent of Asian Americans and 33 percent of African Americans own smartphones, compared to 27 percent of whites According to a 2010 Joint Center broadband adoption report, African Americans are ahead of all other racial and ethnic groups in mobile access, with 11 percent of African Americans reporting that their cell phone was their preferred device for accessing the Internet. Forty-seven percent of African Americans and 41 percent of Hispanics both reported higher usage rates of wireless broadband service as compared to their white counterparts (38 percent).

Clearly, this legislation addresses the key areas that affect the ability of African Americans to be full participants in our economy. Its support for the unemployed and tax benefits to working people will help further stimulate the economy and create jobs, while spectrum policy reform will help ensure that people of color continue to have access to the technology that can enable them to get ahead in life.

During his State of the Union address to the joint houses of Congress in January, President Barack Obama placed himself squarely on the side of the middle class that has been decimated since the economic meltdown of 2008 and a lingering recession. He argued that the economic inequities must be redressed and called on the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share.

Census data released in 2010 illustrates the depth of the problem. Poverty has exploded, and a record 46.2 million people are counted in that category. But when the near-poor and new poor are added, the number of Americans who live in poverty approaches 150 million. Blacks, Hispanics, children and seniors have been hit particularly hard.

---

Roderick Harrison, Ph.D, a Senior Fellow at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Northwest, said the widening gap between rich and poor has been decades in the making.

"I think that the problem that has generated this inequality is the argument that we had wage stagnation for the past 40 years," he said. "Households maintained their standard of living by the increase of female participation in the labor force. At the same time, people piled up debt to maintain their standard of living and when they couldn't finance debt, they experienced all these economic difficulties."

Harrison, a demographer and sociologist, also explained that there is insufficient consumer demand to put people back to work and so the kind of inequalities America is now experiencing emerged.

"Increased productivity (such as installing machinery) and other gains in productivity used to be split between workers and machinery," he said. "Any improvement in wages came from the increase in productivity. We have dug ourselves a hole that will not be easily addressed. The average banker makes 335 times what the bank teller makes. That's three to five times what it used to be. If more of that money is in tellers' hands that would be money spent for food, to buy a home or car – people would spend."

Read more at The Washington Informer.

By just about every measure, life is significantly better for African-Americans and Latinos in small and medium-sized cities and towns in the South and West, according to a recently released report by Urban Institute.

The Washington, DC-based think tank found that the "opportunity gap" that separates African-Americans and Latinos from whites is the largest in the Midwest and Northeast and the smallest in the South and West.

Its study examined factors such as residential segregation, the quality of public schools, neighborhood home values, employment rates and rates of home ownership.

---

The panel drew its talking points from this exhaustive report "The Black Population: 2010," which aggregated nearly a years' worth of Census data.

"A lot of what that may be showing is upward mobility," said Dr. Roderick Harrison, of the growing number of black Americans moving to the suburbs. Harrison is a demographer who teaches at Howard University and senior research fellow at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a nonprofit think tank based in Washington, DC.

"The declines in central cities reflect people moving out from cities like DC, from the poorest areas... to suburban communities that people may perceive to offer better education, safer neighborhoods, better amenities, etc."


Read more at WGXA-TV.

Michael Strautmanis, deputy assistant to President Barack Obama, was ready to go home as was the other dozens of State of the Union watchers packed into the boardroom at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

Despite the obvious fatigue of a long day; plus the intensity of watching President Obama’s hour-long State of the Union speech, there was a late-night agenda on the table. Strautmanis and other White House representatives were on assignment. Their mission was to – not only break down the President’s speech – for the Black political, grassroots, business and civic leaders in the room, but to make plain the President’s plan for the Black community in coming months – especially as it pertains to economics.

---

Ralph Everett, president/CEO of the Joint Center, a Black think-tank, seated at the right of Strautmanis, moderated the discussion, when continued to close to 11 p.m. Only 40 people had been invited to the meeting, but the center had to open up multiple rooms and even turn some people away after more than 140 responded, he said.

This shows that people want to “participate in the process. This was just one way to do that,” he said. The other way will be to vote in November he said.


Read more at The Seattle Medium, or The Louisiana Weekly.

The first lady with the famously buff biceps will be on the move, literally, over the next few days to mark the second anniversary of her "Let's Move!" fitness initiative, aimed at reducing childhood obesity in America.

Today, Michelle Obama kicks off a three-day national tour that begins in Des Moines, Iowa, and makes its way to Little Rock, Arkansas, and Dallas-Fort Worth. The final leg of the trip will include stops at three cities in Florida, including Orlando. The tour comes after Obama made lighthearted appearances on Ellen and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon to promote the initiative over the last two weeks.

---

The splashy anniversary celebration of "Let's Move!" coincides with 2012 presidential politics. Several of the states Mrs. Obama will visit, particularly Florida, are rich in electoral votes and have the potential to sway the outcome of a national election. And some polls suggest Michelle Obama is more popular than her husband.

"There is no way especially in the current climate, that nothing can be seen as totally un-politicized," said David Bositis, senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a black think tank in Washington, D.C. "And because the first lady is viewed very well, the more she is out there, she is seen as an asset to the president's campaign."


Read more at The Grio.

(AP)  ATLANTA — Black lawmakers have lost clout in Southern state capitols as their overwhelming allegiance to the Democratic Party has left them without power in increasingly GOP-controlled state legislatures, a new report says.

The nonpartisan Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington says in a report issued Friday that despite Barack Obama's election as president, black voters and elected officials have less influence now than at any time since the civil rights era.

"Since conservative whites control all the power in the region, they are enacting legislation both neglectful of the needs of African Americans and other communities of color ..." writes senior research associate David Bositis in a paper titled "Resegregation in Southern Politics?"

Bositis points out state legislatures are increasingly divided along racial lines — making Republican synonymous with whites and Democrat and black interchangeable. According to the report, a majority of Democrats in both chambers in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi are black. In half of the southern state legislative chambers, blacks are a majority or near-majority of Democratic members.

Read more at CBS News.