http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/04/12/150515464/in-mexican-viral-video-child-actors-play-scenes-of-crime-and-corruption

The video is in Spanish, but you don’t have to know any Spanish to understand it (trust me, I’m in Spanish 1). But the article and the video are both worth checking out.

‘Fear of a Black Republican’ – Inside Story: US 2012 – Al Jazeera English

Why are the Republican candidates struggling to win the support of African American voters?
In the southern US state of Mississippi nearly 40 per cent of the population is black. But during the state’s March 13 Republican primary, only two per cent of the voters were African Americans – and it was a similar picture throughout other Republican contests.

For years Republican leaders have said they would work hard to increase African American support for their party, but so far, those efforts appear to be a failure.

“I don’t think it’s accurate or fair to say the the Republican party is a party of racists.”

Ana Navarro, a Republican stategist

When asked during an interview why the Republican party is poison for so many African Americans the only black candidate to run for the 2012 Republican ticket, Herman Cain, said it was because “…they have been brainwashed into not being open-minded, not even considering a conservative point of view.”

A documentary titled Fear of A Black Republican was just released here in Washington DC and it posed a similar question: Does the Republican party really want more black people?

So why has the Republican party not been successful in reaching out to black voters? And why are they also losing the hispanic voters?

To discuss these issues, we are joined by James Braxton Peterson, the director of Africana studies at Lehigh University; Ana Navarro, the National Hispanic co-chair for both John McCain and John Huntsman; and Kevin Williams, the director of the film, Fear of a Black Republican.

“I think there is a core cultural competency challenge here that the Republican party… has lost it’s sense and its ability to connect with communities of colour. You’ve got to be competent about the cultural issues that are important to these communities and then we can talk about the different strategies for trying to secure their votes.”

James Braxton Peterson, analyst on black politics

LOSING THE BLACK VOTE:

The Republican party has currently little support among black voters
Since the early 1960′s black voters have overwhelmingly voted the Democratic party
Richard Nixon was the last Republican candidate to get significant black support
Nixon got 32 per cent of black vote in his loss to John F Kennedy in 1960
President Lyndon Johnson got 94 per cent support from black voters after he signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964
Republicans promoted the abolition of slavery, gaining black votes
President Dwight Eisenhower got 39 per cent of black vote in 1956
In the 2008 election John McCain received just 4 per cent of black votes
In the 2008 US presidential election 95 per cent of African Americans voted for Obama

You can find the program we watched part of in Tuesday’s class here, along with several other quality documentaries. I thought that ”The People Want…” and “The Death of Fear” were particularly good. For more on the failed uprising in Bahrain, see this documentary, also by Al Jazeera.

As we await the SCOTUS’s jurisdiction on the Affordable Care Act, here’s a recent ruling: Justices Approve Strip-Searches for Any Offense.

The Supreme Court is hearing arguments about the constitutional legality of the Affordable Care Act, which was signed into law in 2010. Follow this link to a timeline from the New York Times detailing a short history of the bill and the neologism “Obamacare.”

As Zakaria discusses the drawbacks of wealth, particularly wealth in natural resources which is a form of “easy money,” he also conveys the potential detriment of charitable giving. In this animated video, neo-Marxist philosopher Slavoj Zizek discusses the ways in which charity and perceived ethical behavior are instrumental in capitalist economies. “Green” products are a distinct part of this phenomenon, which is in part indicated by the unfortunately high premiums paid on hybrid cars.

Here is the Frontline Documentary on Tiananmen Square. We talked today, with Zongwei’s help, about the potential biases represented in this particular representation.

The occurrence of the 2008 financial crisis aroused investors’ awareness. Voice began to appear in the society about adding control to stock market. However, reviewing the global finance trend, restriction seemed not be the way out. At the same time, it will increase stability to the market investment, it restricted the space for the economy to boost.

In the passage, that we recently read, “The Post American World”, written by Zakaria. Compared with America, China was an example for an over-protected market. As it mentioned, China became America’s largest foreign creditor in the world. Investing such a large amount of money into a foreign market, China then became able to resolve their domestic economic problem if that happens. Unlike American, it didn’t apply much of those high risky while high-profit investments. Because of that, China might be better prepared for crisis such as the 2008 recession. However, according to the message, “Sending so much money abroad instead of investing it productively costs the Chinese roughly one percentage point of GDP a year, or more than $40 billion annually.” Such enormous cost every year will limit its economic growth in some degree, since its own market also needs funds to support. So, over-saving indeed restricts a country’s economic development.

Also, in the global economic competition, although different countries’ economies have been connected through marketing and commerce, every single country is also competing with the others. Once restriction is added, the less-free market became comparatively less competitive. It reduces the risk of investing, so the benefit reward will decrease at the same time. That can hit investors’ interests on the market and turn their vision to markets in foreign countries such as China, which provided cheap and attractive goods.

When a market is regulated in such ways, it’s like a child who has been protected by his/her mother’s arms. It will be safe and free from falling, but it also can’t grow up. In the race of economy around the world, being too cautious to take risks would also be an obstacle for the market to grow bigger.

The sale of mortgage-backed securities contributed to the epidemic nature of the 2008 credit crisis, providing the groundwork for systemic risk on a global scale.  This history, to a large extent, has made the price of these securities plummet. Today there is a “wave of interest in [these] same complex loan pools that nearly washed away the financial system” because of these low prices. What do you think about this new trend?

Here’s the episode we watched today in class:

Here’s another episode that relates to European conquest of America, specifically the conquistador Francisco Pizarro’s excursion in Inca Peru:

The financial crisis of 2008 was a result of many things; one of the more important being the civilians, common people, and homeowners. The homeowners took too many mortgages on houses that they couldn’t pay back; this started a chain reaction. Not only did they take one to many mortgages, but, they kept on taking these mortgages, so the process never stopped!

After the people couldn’t pay back the banker, who owned the mortgage, he couldn’t pay back the government and other banks that lend money. Then the banker had no money to buy any mortgages so the mortgage brokers went bankrupt too. This whole problem initiated from the people as you can see. The sub-prime mortgages they took were what overtime lead everyone in the process to lose a lot of money. Yes, the bankers did accept the sub-prime mortgages, but they also put credit-swap defaults on the mortgages because they thought the mortgage wouldn’t default, but it did, and the banks lost even more money; therefore, the whole market froze and no one was able to pay anyone anything or trade stock, this lead stock brokers to lose a lot of money too. So, in the case, Wall Street and the government seem as if they are the victim of this huge collapse, and the common people are the bad guys. But, I wouldn’t call them bad people, its the ignorance of our population that has lead us to this. If our population gets more educated they would know the difference between harming our economy and helping it. Once people begin to get educated our economy will be just as good as any other in the world.

As you can see the people are the ones who initiated this process, yet they just blamed everything on Wall Street and the government, which could be blamed partially. But, in the long run it was the common peoples fault, people need to stop pointing fingers and go to the source. (An Inside Look ) But, this is hard for people to do because they can’t accept  that common people could create a world problem like this! It is a scary thought, but once people get past the initial thoughts of this, it will make sense to them.