The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies released a comprehensive analysis of African American voting patterns in the 2010 midterm elections at a forum held on November 16, 2010. Entitled The 2010 Midterm Elections: Implications for African Americans and Other Communities of Color, the forum was sponsored in part by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and the Institute for Policy Studies.

Although many African Americans depend on Social Security benefits to meet their basic needs, the value of the program to this group is often debated and sometimes misrepresented or discounted. At a time when the nation is seeking to put its financial house in order and concurrently considering reforms to guarantee the future solvency and sustainability of Social Security, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, with support from AARP, prepared this primer to spell out the facts about how Social Security's disability, survivor and retirement programs serve African Americans.

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African Americans are far more reliant on the Social Security program than many realize, and accordingly they need to take an active role in the debate over its future, according to a new report from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

African Americans and Social Security: A Primer, released Monday, dispels misrepresentations about African Americans – such as those supporting the belief that African Americans do not benefit from Social Security because of their shorter life expectancy.  Information in the report is intended to provide a basis for discussion as Congress considers changes to the retirement, disability and survivor benefits program as a means of addressing the nation’s fiscal woes.

This analysis provides a brief review of the potential role of black voters and candidates in the 2010 Midterms. In particular, it examines some past midterm elections where a strong black turnout had a very material effect on various election outcomes. Black voters are strategically situated in 2010 to have a major impact provided an effort is made to get them to polls on November 2.

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This publication is a brief review of some of the available evidence on what transpired on November 2, 2010, when the Democrats lost their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and at least 19 state legislative chambers, maintained control in the U.S. Senate, and lost several important gubernatorial elections. The black vote was critical to the outcome of some closely contested elections, but not enough in many more. In particular, this review will focus on the behavior and significance of African-American voters in the 2010 midterm elections; and the changing numbers and profile of black candidates for both federal and statewide office, as well as their performance at the polls.

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Dr. David Bositis will be presenting an analysis of the 2010 election results at a meeting of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights on February 17 and 18. This meeting will not be open to the public.

For more information on the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, please visit their website.

The current outrage among progressives about the tax deal negotiated by President Obama and Republicans reminds me of a philosophical debate we used to have when I was an anti-poverty community organizer in the late 1960s in southern West Virginia. Most organizers were idealistic middle-class college students or recent college graduates who were convinced they were on the side of the angels in trying to change a system that unfairly condemned the powerless to a daily struggle for economic survival while those with political and economic power wielded their power for personal gain at the expense of the powerless. We believed passionately that compromise equaled "selling out" and that it was better to fail while standing on principle than to take half a loaf.

But while we could and would trade our community organizing efforts for economically secure careers after a few years, those who were struggling to put food on their tables, a roof over their family's head, and clothes on their children's backs were less interested in changing the system than they were in making it to the next day. To them, as President Obama alluded to in his press conference, an abstract debate about principle was a luxury they couldn't afford. That's what progressives need to keep in mind over the next few days as this deal moves toward a vote in Congress.

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The Great Recession that began at the end of 2007 and pulled the economy sharply downward in 2008 and 2009 was but the latest and largest symptom of an underlying malady that emerged around 1980 when American workers first experienced the double threat of global competition and labor-replacing technologies.

The economic downturn, which began in December 2007, aptly has been called the Great Recession. The trough of job losses occurred in December 2009, by which time 8.4 million or 6.1 percent of all non-farm jobs were lost. This represented the largest decline of jobs (in either absolute numbers or percentage terms) since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

In response to this ongoing crisis, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009—a spending and tax relief package that totaled $787 billion. While the ARRA provided much needed relief and stimulus, the size and scope of the package was not in proportion to the enormity of the crisis. Too much of it was geared to ineffective tax cuts instead of direct job creation, and the crisis proved to be much worse than originally thought. Today the unemployment rate remains elevate  at 9.5 percent and many economists worry that the country is, at best, in a jobless recovery similar to what occurred after the 1990 and 2001 recessions. At worst, we may be heading into a dreaded double-dip. For the black community, the Great Recession has been catastrophic, and the prospect of a jobless recovery or further recession will extend the widespread economic and social woes in which much of the community is now mired.