http://www.blackcommentator.com/103/103_cover_black_attack_dogs.htmlThe sham of GOP Black voter outreach is over and the true Republican mission has begun: suppress the African American vote, by any means possible. To that end, the Bush men have enlisted the mercenary services of Black front groups invented by rightwing foundations in the Nineties to push for school vouchers and other elements of the Republican agenda. These bought-and-paid-for servants of the Hard Right took to the airwaves in August calling themselves People of Color United and spending a rich white Republican man’s money to attack Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry as “rich, white and wishy-washy.”
Virginia Walden-Ford, the operative who placed the attack ads on Black-oriented radio stations in the “battlefield” states of Pennsylvania, Missouri, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin, is for all practical purposes a paid agent of the Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She is a founding board member of the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO), the pro-school vouchers group conceived, birthed and jump-started with at least $2 million in 1999 by the far-right Bradley and Walton Family Foundations (Wal-Mart). Since George Bush assumed office, BAEO and a host of its vouchers/privatization siblings – each the incestuous spawn of the Right’s foundation funding network – have collected over $77 million dollars in grants from Secretary Rod Paige’s Education Department. In effect, Virginia Walden-Ford’s BAEO – which received $1.3 million in federal funds – has been “graduated” to a Bush administration functionary, while continuing to be subsidized by the Walton family, Bradley, and other far-right moneybags. These Black attack dogs are well fed.
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There is a great anger among African Americans, which can be invoked with the mention of a single word: Florida. However, there is also a wild card out there, a joker that Black America has never before had to confront: the electoral effects of faith-based bribery of Black preachers. (See “Defunding the Right Rev. Dr. Greedygut,” January 2, 2003.) Tens of millions of dollars have been doled out by faith-based offices in most federal departments: Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Labor, Justice, Education, Agriculture, the Agency for International Development. In June, the faith-based political grab bag was extended to the Veterans Administration, the Small Business Administration and the Department of Commerce.
Thousands of Black clergy – heavily weighted with Pentecostals who, before the political money became available, largely eschewed temporal, electoral affairs – have applied for these grants and contracts. Are they capable of mobilizing large congregations for Bush, against the better judgement – the Black consensus – among church membership? The great anomaly in the CBS/BET poll is Black antipathy to gay marriage. According to the CBS/BET poll: “More than half (53%) of African American voters think there should be no legal recognition of same-sex relationships. Among voters overall, 39% share this view.”
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