Benjamin Todd Jealous, the CEO of the NAACP, must feel pretty ridiculous.  He wrote a harshly worded statement condemning a fellow NAACP activist, Shirley Sherrod, for showing racism.  As it turns out, it was all a mistake.  Shirley Sherrod’s message, in fact, is:  racism is simply a device by those in power to divide the poor and disadvantaged.

Jealous evidently saw a short video clip taken from an hour long speech given by Shirley Sherrod to a NAACP chapter. In that clip, Sherrod apparently admits that, 24 years earlier, a racist motive caused her to mistreat a white farmer who asked for help from the government agricultural agency where she was employed.

In response to the video clip, Jealous went ballistic.  In his letter (see below) Jealous calls Sherrod’s behavior appalling — shameful, intolerable — and says that he agrees that she deserved to be pushed out of her government job.

Jealous is now apologizing to Sherrod and is urging that she be restored to her government job.  But the fact that initially Jealous released his harsh comments via an official statement is amazing. Evidently, he did zero research before condemning a fellow NAACP activist.  I have to think that NAACP members don’t appreciate that the credibility of their CEO has taken a major hit.  I’ve got to wonder if this demonstration of total lack of judgment will lead to the eventual resignation of Jealous as CEO of the NAACP.

The full 43 minutes of Sherrod’s speech (see below) is well worth listening to.   She tells of her childhood — the KKK burning crosses in their yard — and explains that the very day of that speech was the anniversary of the funeral of her father, a man she adored. She explains that her father died a violent death at the hand of a white man, a man who was never prosecuted.  She was 17 at the time.  She points that in her early life, living in South George, there were a lot of reasons for her to hate whites, but her point is that, by the grace of God, her heart and mind were changed.  She says her experience with the white farmer, that she speaks about in the short clip, was a life changing experience that helped open her eyes. She eventually worked tirelessly on the farmer’s behalf.

It’s a touching speech, in which Sherrod shares her personal growth, with the goal, I think, to move some of her listeners toward her new point of view. She is trying to make a point:  It’s about poverty, not racism. Sherrod seems authentic, down to earth, likable. Maybe this turn in her life may help her launch a political or speaking career.

This is the initial statement written by the CEO of NAACP, Benjamin Todd Jealous:

Jealous issued NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous issued the following statement today after learning of the resignation of Shirley Sherrod of the United States Department of Agriculture:

“Since our founding in 1909, the NAACP has been a multi-racial, multi-faith organization that– while generally rooted in African American communities– fights to end racial discrimination against all Americans.

We concur with US Agriculture Secretary Vilsack in accepting the resignation of Shirley Sherrod for her remarks at a local NAACP Freedom Fund banquet.

Racism is about the abuse of power. Sherrod had it in her position at USDA. According to her remarks, she mistreated a white farmer in need of assistance because of his race.

We are appalled by her actions, just as we are with abuses of power against farmers of color and female farmers.

Her actions were shameful. While she went on to explain in the story that she ultimately realized her mistake, as well as the common predicament of working people of all races, she gave no indication she had attempted to right the wrong she had done to this man.

The reaction from many in the audience is disturbing. We will be looking into the behavior of NAACP representatives at this local event and take any appropriate action.

We thank those who brought this to our national office’s attention, as there are hundreds of local fundraising dinners each year.

Sherrod’s behavior is even more intolerable in light of the US Department of Agriculture’s well documented history of denying opportunities to African American, Latino, Asian American, and Native American farmers, as well as female farmers of all races. Currently, justice for many of these farmers is being held up by Congress. We would hope all who share our outrage at Sherrod’s statements would join us in pushing for these cases to be remedied.

The NAACP will continue to advance the ideals of America and fight for freedom, justice and fairness for all Americans.”

Ohio’s current budget was funded with $8 billion worth of one-time windfalls (see the chart below) — like Federal Stimulus money. Ohio’s new State Assembly — to be elected November 4 — will need to find $8 billion to close this budget gap. This represents 20% of the budget and finding such a huge amount of money will be an enormous challenge for Ohio’s elected representatives.

The Center for Community Solutions, has produced an impressive 50 page white paper analyzing Ohio’s budget challenge. The paper is ominously entitled, “Thinking the Unthinkable,” and, the problem is, “thinking” is not a task easily accommodated in the usual bumper sticker sized allotment of public attention.

Candidates for public office don’t want to deal with reality. It’s not seen as a good election strategy.

Ohio’s $8 billion budget challenge is unprecedented in Ohio’s history, but, the web-sites of the candidates from Montgomery County, seeking election to Ohio’s Assembly, ignore this reality. Balancing the budget will be the biggest task facing the new Assembly, but none of the local incumbents, and none of the challengers, on any of their web-sites, mention a word of this budget tsunami headed our way.

If our democracy had any substance, it seems to me, citizens would demand that candidates to the Assembly present some rational point of view about the looming budget crisis. In a functioning democracy, every candidate seeking election to Ohio’s Assembly would be called upon to demonstrate that he or she has a grasp of the information presented in this Community Solutions report, and would be expected to present a rational and carefully thought out point of view about the matter.

This Community Solution report is dedicated to the memory of Richard Sheridan who passed away at age 72 this past year. Sheridan was long considered the foremost expert on the Ohio budget process and DaytonOS, in its short history, has referenced Sheridan’s work a number of times. (See here, here, and here.)

The Community Solutions report is full of graphs and tables and in future posts I will revisit the information in this report again. As a start, the graph, shown above,  is compelling and one that deserves to be particularly highlighted and discussed. It shows that Ohio’s tax system at present is regressive: those with lower incomes pay higher percentages of their incomes in state and local taxes and those with higher incomes pay lower percentages.  If Ohio seeks to be a progressive state, shouldn’t it have a progressive tax system?

The Center for Community Solutions suggests a three part strategy to solving Ohio’s budget crisis:

• tax increases,
• reductions in tax expenditures, and
• reductions in programmatic expenditures.

Excerpts For the Report:

• While the term ‘tax expenditures’ may be unfamiliar, their existence and significance are quite familiar indeed. More generally, and pejoratively, described as ‘loopholes’ or ‘tax breaks,’ they may be defined as a loss of tax revenue attributable to an exemption, deduction, preference, or other exclusion from tax law.
• In Ohio, the relative burden of state and local taxes paid by businesses has steadily declined since 1975, from 40 percent to 26 percent in 2010. This trend was reinforced by the business, personal income, and sales tax changes adopted five years ago in H.B. 66, and subsequent modifications enacted during 2009 in H.B. 318. (It is worth noting, too, that these tax changes also shifted a significant portion of taxes paid by individuals and families from the progressive income tax to the regressive sales tax.)
• While incomes for most Americans have stagnated for three decades, those of Ohioans have generally stagnated at lower levels, reducing the capacity of the middle class in particular to bear additional tax burdens.
• The wealthiest fifth of taxpayers have enjoyed soaring incomes for over 20 years. While progressive federal taxes have also made them by far the largest contributors to the overall costs of government, the regressive effects of combined state and local taxes in Ohio take a larger share of middle class incomes than the wealthy.
• Business taxes, as a proportion of state tax revenue, have been in steady decline for several decades; the long-range implications in this regard of the 2005 tax overhaul are as yet unclear.
• State personal income and business tax changes during the middle of the last decade (The 2005 Tax Reduction Act) have contributed significantly to the structural deficit.  (About $2 billion per year or $4 billion per per biannual budget).
• Returning to the former upper bracket rate of 7.5 percent for those whose incomes have outpaced the vast majority of Ohioans, would affect just over 2 percent of taxpayers, while raising $448 million annually. (This top rate, and all rates, were reduced 17% by the 2005 Tax Reduction Act, and are still scheduled to be reduced 4.1% more.)
• The imbalance between business and individual taxes also might be addressed in a revenue package. Currently, the rate on the CAT is set too low to reimburse schools and local governments for the full amount of lost tangible property tax revenue. The resulting drain on the General Revenue Fund during the next biennium is estimated to be $322 to $438 million, far short of even beginning to replace lost revenue from the former corpo- rate franchise tax. Each 1/100 of 1 percent increase in the CAT would annually raise approximately $50 million. An increase of 0.08 percent would yield about $400 million annually, enough to cover the estimated cost of GRF subsidies to schools and local governments for loss of tangible personal property tax revenue, and return ap- proximately $200 million per year to the GRF. Table 5 outlines some options for increasing tax revenue.