Second Civil War

Rebirth of a Realist
Report from the Manhattan Insitute For Policy Research.


There is a wide disparity in the graduation rates of white and minority students. In the class of 2002, about 78% of white students graduated from high school with a regular diploma, compared to 56% of African-American students and 52% of Hispanic students.
• There is also a large difference among racial and ethnic groups in the percentage of students who leave high school eligible for college admission. About 40% of white students, 23% of African-American students, and 20% of Hispanic students who started public high school graduated college-ready in 2002.


From the book The Second Civil War by David Truskoff

The first time that I met LeRoy Jerome Moton was in March of 1965, one hundred years after the first battle of Selma. He was in his late teens, and the Messiah had come to his hometown. The six-foot four gangling youth glowed in the Messiah’s reflection.
It was all a beautiful dream. Martin Luther King, that very articulate, internationally famous, Black man had come to Selma Alabama to lead them to the Promised Land. LeRoy was ready to follow no matter what the cost; no matter what sacrifice had to be made, no matter what dangers had to be faced.
LeRoy Jerome Moton is an intense person, but he has a smile that could turn the Wicked Witch of the West into Mother Teresa. His very presence added to the excitement of being part of the worlds greatest love in, the 1965 Selma March that seemed to shake this country out of it’s one hundred year long Racist stupor.
When ever he came marching into town singing and laughing with a group of students behind him, you couldn’t help but get caught up in the excitement generated by the young pied piper who walked, always, like the Alabama mud was too deep.
The last time that I saw LeRoy we both shared a podium at the University of Hartford on Martin Luther King day, in 1997. His hair was silver and his young son sat in the first row of the audience. He was doing quit well. He had a good job, nice home and he was free of the frightening grip of depression and frustration that plagued him in the seventies and part of the eighties. It was a joyous reunion. I was so glad to see him, but I soon learned that his disappointment about America’s progress in ending racism that he saw as not only alive and well, but also developing new roots among both Blacks and Whites, was the same as my disappointment.
When students ask me the question, what has happened to white liberals in America, and why do they seem to be moving away from civil rights. I told them how I felt when Jessie Jackson called New York City “Hymie Town.” I felt betrayed. If I, as a white man, called New York “Nigger Town” I would be cast out of the society, but Jackson was not cast out. He is still accepted in the Black community as a leader, and he has his own TV program. I shall never forgive him, nor should anyone. If that kind of phrase comes out of his mouth, then it is part of his thoughts. To me he is a bigot. I do not think that Black people have ever assessed the lasting damage that Jackson has done.
I feel obligated to tell the students about the depth of the impact the O.J. Simpson trial had on race relations vis-a-vis white liberal America. I had to put that into perspective for them. I told them that in March of 1965 a Beautiful person named Viola Liuzzo was murdered by a group of cowardly, racist thugs as she drove along the highway in Alabama. She was on her way to pick up freedom marchers that wanted to return to Selma Alabama from Birmingham where the historic Civil Rights march ended.
I knew her and I knew how proud she was to be helping Doctor King and all the young people who she thought would get a better chance at life once segregation was defeated. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind who the killers were. The FBI. had a paid informer in the car that pulled along side of her car and emitted the fatal shots.
The men were brought to trial in a small segregated county in Alabama. The lawyer for the killers blamed “Communists” for the killing. He also tried to convince the all white jury that Leroy Moton the young black man riding with Viola might have been the killer. The defense lawyer, Imperial Klonsel Matt H. Murphy Jr. said, in his address to the Jury, “The nigger is an African, and everybody knows that the African lived by the tooth and the claw for three thousand years and never built anything on earth more advanced than a hut with a thatched roof.”
It was all a shame and a disgrace to American jurist prudence. The killers walked out of the courtroom free men and signed autographs as they left. Two members of the all white jury, frightened of what the K.K.K. might do to them, could not bring themselves to convict. But wait, I hear you saying isn’t that awful. How could that happen in an American courtroom? Yes, the lawyer who got them off; the racist jury and the frightened judge should all be condemned.
Now I ask you, dear reader, how could I not tell those students to think about what Black attorney John Cochran did in the O.J. Simpson trial? Did he not play the same race card? He even went so far as to have Minister Louis Farrakhan’s body guards come into the courtroom and menacingly stare at the almost all Black jury during the last days of the trial, just as the Klan stared at the all white jury during the Liuzzo trial. I ask you, where is the condemnation? Cochran is a hero in the Black community. He even has his own TV show, as does Jessie Jackson, although I doubt if many white liberals watch either one of them. Many liberals feel betrayed, as I do, and many take their hidden rage into the voting booths with them.
While Black intellectuals talk at each other, and the Black middle class seems preoccupied with escaping Black, the rage among poor blacks increases with each passing day, and the danger exists that when a spark ignites the rage, white liberals will have their own rage to deal with.
It appears that most African American people today cannot determine if they, as a group, are moving forward or backward. In the face of present day media control it is difficult to determine if we, as a nation, have made two steps forward and one step back, or one step forward and two steps back. Perhaps in the sixties we made one giant step and have been moving in inches ever since. LeRoy had no such problem that day in 1997, his speech was full of pessimism and anger.

Today in 2006 I ask you,Is America moving ahead, back or not moving at all?

Memories of Coretta

Rebirth of a Realist

I was exhusted and pretty much burned out. It was just a day or two before the
Mississippi March reached Jackson. Big Leon(We knew few surnames. There was big Leon and Little Leon) came to me and asked me if I wanted to baby sit for Doctor King's kids. I remember wondering what the hell the kids were doing in Mississippi at that time.
WE met at a Motel room and Coretta was her usual regal self. We were all in awe of her. Her husband was our leader and one of us, but she was above us. There were times when we worried about our own lives, butCoretta worried about her husband and her family every day.
It was many years ago, but I remember it very clearly. I remember looking at the children in their beds and asking Leon what kind of a world will they live in. "A much better one He answered.
"Do you think we are making real progress," I asked. "Of course," he said. "If I didn"t I wouldn't be risking my life in Mississippi. "
"Why do you think she brought the kids down here?"
"I know her. She is a mother and a family person. She has no idea what tomorrow will bring and she wants her husband to spend time with the kids."
Leon was much younger than I and still carried that beautiful youthful optimism.
As I said, I was burned out and depressed. We had taken a beating in Canton Mississippi and nothing seemed the same after that. I felt the non violent movement was dead and from here on in it was politics, hate and violence.
That was a memorable night for me. I kept looking at the kids and remembering myself when I was fifteen and asking my father, "why do the German People let Hitler do those things?" His answer was always the same."Fear"
He tried to explain about Rosa Luxenberg, the Communist who was shot by Nazi thugs. He told me that the Communist party was almost the dominant party in Germany at the time. They thought they would be winners, but when they shot her others became frightened." I was too young to understand. School and football were the center of my thoughts then.
When I got older and studied such things I wondered how my father knew what so few Americans knew.
He told me about the atmosphere then and that in 1922 and 1923 it was the fear of socialism
that promted americans like Prescot Bush(Grandfather of G.W. Bush) to support and to help create Hitler.
Under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the government took over the Union Banking Corporation, in which Bush was a director. The U.S. Alien Property Custodian seized Union Banking Corp.'s stock shares, all of which were owned by Prescott Bush, E. Roland `` Bunny '' Harriman, three Nazi executives, and two other associates of Bush. Yes, the Bush family helped create Hitler.
I remember a moment in that Mississippi motel when looking at the King Children I was overcome with emotion. How can we beat the secret Governments today? Are we risking our lives and marching around while those in the secret Governments are laughing at us?

I watched Coretta's funeral this week and remembering that night in the motel, I got all choked up. The March was so long ago and I just made a talk titled, "Did We Win, and if so what did we win? I pointed out that schools in the north are much more segregated than they were then. The drop out rate is greater than it was then. The income gap is worse than it was then. The fear in the suburbs is worse than it was then. Leaderless Minority kids are shooting each other in the streets. Whites are afraid to drive into town.
Did Coretta know that? Did she die knowing that and wondering what her husband would think about all his efforts and what would he do and say now?

Goopya Dupya in the White house

Rebirth of a Realist
In his state of the Union Speech the president said he would encourage the development of nuclear power
to alleviate the energy problem. I turned on the basketball game. I can take only so much of "goopya dupya"
I remember all the reasons I had to oppose the building of the plants back in the sixties.
The danger...the cost.. I remember pointing out at the hearings that the life span was twenty years and the cost to de-commission would be more than the cost to build. (It was) It would not(And did not) lower the cost of electricity to consumers. There is no plan yet to dispose of nuclear waste... uranium will cost as much as oil...all those reasons are still valid.
The real reason to build huge plants is for Utility holding companies to sell ,not more electricity, but wall street paper. It is the boodogle to end all boondogels. We are in a Capitalist society out of control.
The 2/2/06 Asian Tribune reports,

"The Fed's 1998 triennial Survey of Consumer Finances found that the wealthiest 1 percent of families owned almost half of all shares in the country and the top 5 percent owned three-quarters. The richest 20 percent owned an astonishing 96 percent, which meant that the other 80 percent of the population shared a mere 4 percent of all stock on issue. The result? The richest 1 percent of American families banked 42 percent of the market’s gains between 1989 and 1997, and the wealthiest 10 percent took 86 percent" (Peter Hartcher, Bubble Man, pp. 28-29).A tiny economic elite had a lot to lose from a fall in the market and much to gain from its continued rise and was therefore hostile to any action that would halt the share market spiral.According to Hartcher: "The Fed's 1998 triennial Survey of Consumer Finances found that the wealthiest 1 percent of families owned almost half of all shares in the country and the top 5 percent owned three-quarters. The richest 20 percent owned an astonishing 96 percent, which meant that the other 80 percent of the population shared a mere 4 percent of all stock on issue. The result? The richest 1 percent of American families banked 42 percent of the market’s gains between 1989 and 1997, and the wealthiest 10 percent took 86 percent" (Peter Hartcher, Bubble Man, pp. 28-29).A tiny economic elite had a lot to lose from a fall in the market and much to gain from its continued rise and was therefore hostile to any action that would halt the share market spiral."

In one of my books, "The State House," (a fiction version of the days during the building of the original plants)
The lobbiest and lawyer for the holding company(Remember Roosevelt said (Utility Holding companies must be smashed) tells the union leaders what a strike at the site of the new nuke plant would mean.

"Ok. I guess you are all waiting for me to respond," Peter said. "I assume that the company people have heard all of this before. I haven’t. I want to say first that this came as a surprise to me this morning. Our department had been informed that all was going well with the talks and I was informed of this meeting at the last minute. I was worried because I didn’t feel prepared to enter the negotiations at such a late date, but now I understand what is happening and why I was sent here. I could bullshit you people for at least a half an hour and show my boss that I was doing my job. I am, after all a lawyer and one half-hour of bullshit any lawyer can do standing on his head. We are off the record here, so I’m not going to act like a lawyer, but more like your father giving you the facts of life. First let me give you the overview from the political and the general public point of view. The public, the ratepayer, hates this damned plant because they have to pay for it and they are scared to death of it. They are not on your side. Now, we have a fairly new man who is chairman of the board. . No, let me revise that. He is not a man. He is a walking, talking computer. He looks at the figures on this project and his computer brain goes click, click, click, and out comes some troubling answers. Answers that say that teamster’s trucks that are empty are going in and out of the gate and the company is being billed for full loads. Click, click, click, electricians are logging eight regular hours and at least one hour overtime a day and they actually spend two hours on the job. Click, click, click laborers are getting eleven dollars an hour and they are sitting on their ass waiting for a truck load of cement that was purposely delayed because the project was moving too fast. Click, click, click the contractor is billing us for materials that have never arrived on the site.
Now, the Governor knows these things because the state’s attorney has told him about them. He lets it ride because it is not good politics to smear up the labor unions at this time, before an election, and of course, it is always very bad politics to oppose the concentrated political power of the Utility companies. So where does that leave us? Old computer brain knows what’s going on, but it all comes out of the rate payer so he simply doesn’t give a shit, unless it means a problem for the sale of company stock. Then he really will get agitated. The poor customer hears all of these stories and thinks that he knows what is going on, but feels helpless to do anything about it. As I said that customer is mad as hell because he is paying for it and he is looking for somebody to hit. You people could help him get rid of some of his frustrations with a strike.
Now, we have all been riding this gravy train and it has been lovely. The brokers are making money so fast that they can’t take the time to count it. My company is merging and merging and merging. My own salary now, including my override, is twice what it was just one year ago. Paychecks are going out of here that are so fat that my bank is thinking of setting up a branch out there on the parking lot."

The point is there will be many tradesmen who need the money and would support the building of nuke
plants, so would their union, suppliers, banks and of course Wall Street brokers will love the idea.
Prepare yourself, another fight looms.