Blacks, Hispanics Bail On President

By Dr. Jerome R. Corsi

Minorities disappointed as 'hope,' 'change' fail to deliver

There are increasing signs that President Obama is losing his core constituencies as black and Hispanic minorities have begun charging that candidate Barack Obama lied to them with his message of "hope and change."

Having raised expectations with a charismatic presidential campaign, the Obama White House is now under pressure to deliver results to the blacks and Hispanics who voted for him in record numbers.

Congressional Black Coalition: Obama not listening

Members of the Congressional Black Coalition scheduled a meeting with President Obama last week to demand progress on jobs, especially given that African-American unemployment rates at around 15.6 percent at the end of 2009 were much higher than the 9.3 percent unemployment for whites.

"The 43-member (Black Congressional Caucus) is fighting through one of the most difficult periods in its 39 year history, and some members and aides say they are getting far too little support from the nation's first black president Ã‚â€“ a man they once believed would be their strongest champion," Politico noted.

Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., told Politico, "There's not enough attention to poor people."

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., said, "While I respect President Obama, delivering victories for his political future should be the least of our worries on Capitol Hill."

Hispanics angry that Obama has not delivered

Hispanic Democrats in the House of Representatives threatened last week not to vote for Obamacare if the Senate's strict restrictions barring illegal immigrants from receiving federal subsidies to buy health insurance remained in the final bill, according to the Hill.

WND reported that a group of activists demanding comprehensive immigration reform legislation held a C-Span broadcast press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., to deliver the message to the White House that illegal immigrants and their supporters are losing patience with Obama.

Arguing that deportations of illegal immigrations have actually increased by 60 percent under Obama, the speakers at the press conference stated, often in angry terms, that Obama was not living up to his campaign promises to relax enforcement of immigration laws.

Fair Immigration Reform Movement, or FIRM, a pro-immigration group organized under the auspices of the Center for Community Change in Washington, D.C., sponsored the press conference.

"Today I join my colleagues from immigrant and civil-rights organizations from across the country to denounce the cruel and inhumane immigration enforcement processes that are tearing our communities and our families apart," Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigration Rights of Los Angeles, or CHIRLA, said at the press conference.

Arguing that enforcement of immigration laws has become even more severe under Obama than under President Bush, Salas called for activists around the country to join the immigration march on Washington planned for March 21.

"Many of us celebrated the election of Barack Obama and believed the then-candidate-for-president Barack Obama when he promised to fix our broken immigration system," Salas said. "Yet in the first year, the Obama administration has deported 387,000 people, a record high number of deportations."

Fighting back tears, Beatrice Vasquez, a 15-year-old Hispanic born in the United States, told the story about how U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported her mother who had illegally immigrated to the United States, leaving her alone in the United States with her stepfather.

"My family had hopes Barack Obama was going to stop family separations," she said. "President Obama, show us you are going to do something to show that you are a true president, a president who keeps his word."

"(The Obama administration) seems proud to out-enforce the Bush administration, deporting 1,000 immigrants a day," said Pramila Jayapal, executive director of One America an "immigration rights coalition" in Seattle, Wash. "This is not leadership, and this is not 'change we can believe in.'"

Arguing that it was time for the Obama administration to deliver, Jayapal insisted, "We expect the president to order his administration to stop the deportations and to demonstrate leadership on passing immigration reform."

"It is unconscionable to have over 380,000 people deported in the first year of the Obama administration and our community is angry and our members feel betrayed," said Brent Wilkes, national executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC.

Speaking mostly in Spanish, Artemio Arreola, spokesman for the Mexican-American Coalition for Immigration Reform, said he voted for the first time in November 2008 along with 10 million Hispanics, motivated by a charismatic candidate that promised to end deportations.

"Legalization is the solution; we want it now," he said.

'The Obama Nation' and Obama's history of ignoring minority voters

My best-selling book, "The Obama Nation: Far Left Politics and the Cult of Personality," warned that Obama had a history in Illinois state politics of failing to deliver to his minority constituencies.

In Chapter 6, "Tony Rezko and 'The Chicago Way,'" I wrote that Tony Rezko, now a federal felon serving time in federal prison, managed 30 low-income housing projects in the Chicago area, including 11 that were in the Illinois State Senate district Obama represented.

Foreclosures, followed by abandoned properties, were the legacy of the Rezko low-income-housing empire.

Despite giving the taxpayer and the poor the short end of the stick, Rezko made sure his earnings remained strong and that he had more than enough money to continue making campaign contributions to Obama even as the low-income housing projects failed.

Rather than come to the aid of his impoverished inner-city minority constituents living in Rezko-managed low-income housing projects, Obama worked for the legal firm representing Rezko.

Moreover, reporter Robert Novak exposed the fact that Obama, as a member of that law firm, wrote letters to city and state officials supporting Rezko's bid to get more apartment properties to manage.

To date Obama has refused to release to the public any records of his law firm billing that would indicate the full extent to which he worked to provide Rezko legal representation.

ABOUT : Dr. Jerome Corsi received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in political science in 1972. He is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality and the co-author of Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry, which was also a #1 New York Times bestseller. He is a regular contributor to WorldNetDaily.com.

ABOUT RED ALERT: Jerome Corsi's RED ALERT is your weekly, global financial strategies newsletter. Designed to be your guide to economic trends in the best of times and the worst of times, it is edited by New York Times best-selling author Jerome Corsi, a WND staff writer and columnist. For 25 years, Corsi worked with banks throughout the U.S. and the world developing financial services marketing companies to assist banks in establishing broker/dealers and insurance subsidiaries to provide financial planning products and services to their retail customers. Corsi developed three third-party financial services marketing firms that reached annual gross sales levels of $1 billion in annuities and equal volume in mutual funds. Corsi received his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University in 1972.

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