Media Blackout After Trump Launches Urban Council
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Commentary Politics
Media Blackout After Trump Launches Urban Council To Invest $100 Billion in Black Communities
By Cillian Zeal
December 14, 2018 at 6:41am
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It’s been a busy few weeks in media land, what with Michael Cohen’s sentencing and talk about whether Donald Trump will be impeached, or Michael Flynn’s sentencing and talk about whether Donald Trump will be impeached, or Jamal Khashoggi’s death and how that relates to whether Donald Trump will be impeached.
Mind you, I’m not necessarily saying this isn’t newsworthy. While I don’t think the special counsel needs to be covered with a breathlessness usually reserved for the first few hours after a plane crash (except elongated to 24/7 status), there have been some pretty serious developments in the past few weeks that have changed the complexion of things.
That being said, this doesn’t give the media a pass on reporting other aspects of the Trump presidency — particularly those that might paint it in a favorable light.
For instance, you basically had to actively search to find any mention of the Opportunity and Revitalization Council, a $100 billion initiative to deliver growth in urban communities.
“With the creation of today’s council, the resources of the whole federal government will be leveraged to rebuild low-income and impoverished neighborhoods that have been ignored by Washington in years past,” the president said at a Wednesday event in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, where an executive order establishing the council was signed.
“Our goal is to ensure that America’s great new prosperity is broadly shared by all of our citizens. Our country is doing better than ever, economically, and we’re able to do that.”
The council will be led by Ben Carson, head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“Today, the nation’s unemployment rate is at a 49-year low.
Jobless rates among African-Americans down to a record low of 5.9 percent. Wages on the rise,” Carson said. “While we can all be proud of these achievements, one challenge has remained:
There are still communities in our country that have seen little or no new investment in generations.”
According to the Baltimore Sun, the new program will offer breaks on capital gains taxes to investors in distressed zones — obviously a huge boost to predominately black and minority neighborhoods, which are still lagging in indicators like wage growth.
The opportunity zones, Carson said, “are home to approximately 35 million Americans. The Department of Treasury estimates that the Opportunity Zone legislation could attract over $100 billion in private investment, which will go a long way to spur on jobs and economic development.
“This kind of medicine is precisely what a doctor would prescribe to heal communities where nearly 1 in 3 people live in poverty, and unemployment is nearly twice the national average.”
Pastor Donté Hickman, who the president said is “helping lead a groundbreaking project in the newly designated opportunity zone,” hailed the initiative.
“As pastor of the Southern Baptist Church, and through our Mary Harvin Transformation Center Community Development Corporation, in partnership with other faith-based stakeholder institutions, developed the East Baltimore Revitalization Plan, addressing development needs of over 100 acres just north of Johns Hopkins Hospital,” Hickman said.
“Mr. President, I want you and every agency and potential investor to know that in Baltimore — and in particular, Broadway East, Baltimore — that we have the plan, we have the property, we have the people, we have the professional expertise, and we have the prospectus to jumpstart your urban initiative.
Baltimore is prepared to be a demonstration project for a national urban revitalization strategy.”
Cities ruined by democrat failures will now get the help they need.
https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/media-black...rn-journal