Race row heats up before South Carolina primary
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- January
- 14
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have found themselves steeped in racially tinged bickering just as they’re gearing up for the South Carolina Democratic primary  a race viewed as a good measurement of which presidential candidate has the strongest support from African-Americans, who make up half the vote there.
Shortly before the New Hampshire primary last week, the former First Lady was quoted as saying Martin Luther King’s dream of racial equality was realized when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Since then, she’s been engaged in damage control, including on Sunday when she appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
On the show, Clinton suggested that Obama’s campaign injected racial tension into the presidential contest, saying he distorted her comments about Martin Luther King’s role in the civil rights movement for political gain.
Obama later called Clinton’s accusations “ludicrous,� and said he found Clinton’s comments about King to be ill-advised and unfortunate.
Here is some of the back-and-forth:
On “Meet the Press,” Clinton said,
This is an unfortunate story line the Obama campaign has pushed very successfully … I don’t think this campaign is about gender, and I sure hope it’s not about race.
Later, Obama who was campaigning in Las Vegas, said,
She made an ill-advised statement about Dr. King, suggesting that Lyndon Johnson had more to do with the Civil Right Acts … I did not make the statement. I haven’t commented on the statement. For them to suggest that we’re injecting race as a consequence of a statement she made that we haven’t commented on is pretty hard to figure out.
John Edwards, another presidential hopeful in the Democratic primary, joined the conversation. On Sunday, he told more than 200 people gathered at a predominantly black Baptist church in Sumter, S.C.,
I must say I was troubled recently to see a suggestion that real change came not through the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King but through a Washington politician. I fundamentally disagree with that.
Here’s a clip of Clinton’s comment on YouTube. Tell us your thoughts on what she had to say.
This entry was posted
on Monday, January 14th, 2008 at 1:41 pm by Christina Jeng.
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Restoring the Middle Class, Prosperity and Quality Jobs in the United States
You must have a viable strategy that will be inherently financially supported and carried forward by the “invisible hand of economic globalization”.
The US is declining as the global economic leader, only because the Fed Gov does not have a viable strategy. The US became the Economic Leader of the World only by the supported hard work of technically creative individuals, engineers and scientists, inventors, who led the world in INNOVATION (Greenspan has listed INNOVATION as the missing ingredient in the current US strategy, that previously was in place, and the Intellectual Property and Patents, built this country to be the world leader).
As a graduate engineer and small entity inventor, I have started ventures and provided quality jobs, however, the large entities, like the old “robber barons� have managed to rob me of my Intellectual Property.
The current laws, gov, large entities, venture capitalists, and powers of influence, consider what actually built this US, now equals high risk, and strongly discourage and make unpopular, any financial support for qualified individual technologists, inventors, scientists, and engineers. Studies at MIT have proven that these qualified individuals working independently have, always created the most significant inventions and new manufacturing with quality jobs.
Restoring the Middle Class, prosperity and quality jobs in the US will only happen when you create Support Programs and restore tax shelters for financial support for individual qualified engineers, technologists, inventors, and start-ups. In this way, the current 80% employment that is provided by small entities would generate a wealthy middle class, instead of a group of “hamburger flippers�. This will also solve the problem of math and science leadership of young people, and encourage the neglected 40% of high IQ students to pursue math and science.
David A. Estabrooks, ScM
estabrooksdavid@yahoo.com
617-240-2968