Political analyst on KCAL-9 TV Los Angeles, Ms. Stewart, has an article in the ($$) Wall Street Journal describing Ted Hayes. A must read for those that don’t know who Ted Hayes is.

Rasta Republican

By JILL STEWART
April 28, 2005 12:07 a.m.; Page A19

LOS ANGELES — Condoleezza Rice and Ward Connerly once epitomized black Republicans in California. But their ilk now also includes Ted Hayes, a social activist and inner-city coach whose billowing robes and dreadlocks don’t exactly conjure up an image of the GOP.

More blacks than ever support vouchers and faith-based initiatives, and side with President Bush on gay marriage. Mr. Hayes recently made the transition himself, ending a long journey for this former leftist who founded Dome Village, an outcropping of pod-like homeless shelters along the freeway in downtown Los Angeles.

There are other prominent black Republicans in California, of course, such as syndicated radio host Larry Elder and community relations expert Joe Hicks. But even among these unusual thinkers, Mr. Hayes stands out. He’s an intense critic of L.A.’s powerful “black old guard” — Democratic politicians, charity bosses and inner-city preachers who, for a generation, have responded to poverty and illiteracy by demanding government programs and blaming white racism.

Not surprisingly, plenty of people wish pesky black Republicans like Mr. Hayes would just slink away. He has skewered L.A.’s entrenched black leaders as “Negro officials,” and he has the street cred to get away with it. As L.A. endured another crisis between black leaders and cops recently, he refused to denounce police for shooting dead a 13-year-old, Devin Brown, after a car chase. Instead, Mr. Hayes’s press release faulted black church leaders who, despite their great power, rarely point to the lack of parental responsibility.

A totemic figure in L.A., Mr. Hayes has long emphasized problem-solving and individual responsibility. If you want to stop kids from shooting people, Mr. Hayes has told appalled black preachers and activists, stop blaming cops and “white folks” for urban tragedy and start blaming the lackadaisical inner-city family culture you support.

Mr. Hayes spent last fall tooling around the fortified neighborhoods of South Los Angeles, knocking on security screens and urging stunned residents to vote Bush. He explained that the Democratic Party was the Klan’s party in the 20th century, and the party of the slave trade before that. A lot of people he met didn’t know their pre-1960s history. He’s ever unflappable. In early December, he appeared on Fox News to vociferously defend the right of Condi Rice to be Republican. His segment was introduced by a bemused Brit Hume, who hardly knew what to make of the Rasta Republican.

To illustrate how easily civility can rub off on urban kids if adults take a stand, Mr. Hayes in the 1990s founded a cricket team in rundown Compton , comprised of Latino teenagers and homeless men. The team, called “Homies and Popz,” toured Ireland and England, playing at Windsor Castle, where Mr. Hayes chatted with the Earl of Wessex. Mr. Hayes’s son, Theo, a co-coach, told an interviewer that none of the cricket-playing kids has become a gang casualty. The Los Angeles Opera commissioned a 40-minute opera on the team by Michael Abels, and the Homies won two victory cups in the L.A. Social Cricket Alliance, a league dominated by Brits, Indians and other googly-bowling expats.

Mr. Hayes can ignite controversy, as when he persuaded L.A. officials to sign a declaration two years ago calling on Muslims to denounce global terrorism more vehemently. City leaders rewrote the declaration, making Mr. Hayes’s original wording tougher. When Muslim leaders expressed outrage, city officials quickly apologized. Mr. Hayes still smarts over public criticism of him by Muslim leaders arising from the incident, which he says could be cited by radical Islamists as reason to harm him physically.

Even that sort of dread doesn’t seem as tough as being a black Republican some days. He was outraged when a liberal white radio personality called Condi Rice an “Aunt Jemima” for embracing Republicanism, and even angrier when top black Democrats stood silent. He founded ABE — American Black Elephants — a group that so far has 10 members. At a recent L.A. County Republican Party meeting, Mr. Hayes erupted into “God Bless America” after watching slides from a soldier who’d just returned from Iraq. Less emotive Republicans, though startled, joined right in.

Mr. Hayes’s Republican bent has strained relations within his family. His daughter, Joanna, who won gold in the Athens Olympics in the 100-meter hurdles, explained on PBS last year that after much political confusion, she’s learned to be deeply proud of her dad.

Yet in spite of the gnashing of teeth he provokes, Mr. Hayes earns grudging respect. In the ’90s, with nonprofits citing a lack of “affordable housing” as a key cause of homelessness, Mr. Hayes — living among the domes — suggested that many black homeless men were modern-day tramps who viewed the middle class with disdain. But he was constructive, not merely critical, and proposed a National Homeless Plan to enlist corporations to help resistant homeless men support themselves in special communities — winning private contracts like those that now go to incarcerated prisoners.

A principled man (like Mr. Connerly, the University of California regent who persuaded voters to end affirmative action in college admissions), Mr. Hayes has the courage of his convictions. Recently, he met with L.A. City Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa to sound out his thoughts on the Hayes-Muslim dustup. Mr. Villaraigosa, for his part, is seeking to become the first Latino mayor of L.A. since Abraham Lincoln’s time, and has been peeling black votes away from incumbent James Hahn. He needs not to alienate the dreadlocked and outspoken Republican.

Mr. Hayes’s victories are small — enjoying face time with a busy politician, teaching street kids the finer points of cricket, and helping homeless men pull themselves together. Each is a part of the Hayes project. And he’s got patience, especially when it comes to broadening the Republican tent. Or, as Ted Hayes might call it, the Republican dome.

Ms. Stewart, a Los Angeles-based writer and syndicated columnist, is a political analyst on KCAL-9 TV Los Angeles.

April 27, 2005

More Pictures

It is now about 6:30am and I am sitting on my balcony at my room and the view is beautiful. All I hear now are the birds chirping, and other exotic animals calling. It is so peaceful here at the Taj West End. But once you step out onto the local streets, it is completely different story. I went to this restaurant for the second time last night called the Blue Ginger. The food was good as usual, but I think I am getting sick of rice right about now. I am riced out! I will be getting ready soon for work. My driver will be here at 8:30am as usual. That means I must have my breakfast at 8am. Yesterday wasn’t so good for me. I had some stomach problems and I didn’t get to train like I wanted, though we did go through some good materials. Hopefully today will be more productive. Also, I didn’t take too many pictures yesterday but hopefully I will take a lot today.

After seeing all the poverty out here in India, I believe it tightens my conservative beliefs about the US. I do understand countries like India needs to be more liberal, because of the limitations of resources to prosper (good jobs, financial aid, etc…) to get a good start. But a country like the US is different. It is established and resources are plenty. One can work really hard out here in India and get nowhere. One can work hard in the US and the sky’s the limit. I guess I am just a strong believer in the merit system, the minimum excuse system. But sometimes this merit system does not always apply to all countries, especially a country like India. I am not saying one cannot do well in India coming from poverty, but it is extremely harder than one doing well in the US coming from poverty. Also, I honestly believe many folks out here in America abuse our public funding systems and they are always bitching and complaining that they want more. More this, more that, free this, free that. Well, where is all this more and free coming from. The people out here in India are poor and I don’t see them running around trying to increase minimum wage. I think people in America should spend more of their energy into bettering themselves instead of spending it on complaining what they don’t have that they haven’t worked for.

Post Work

The traffic was really bad today after work, worse than it has been so far. I noticed it was very foggy outside of the car on the way back to my room. I thought it was just typical fog. But once I exited the car, I smelled and felt the thickness of the air. It was all of the fumes from all the cars and bikes on the rode. The air was horrible, worse than I ever experienced in my life (at least I can remember). I am now in my room and I do not want to leave because of the air. Typically, I eat at this outdoor restaurant in the facilities, but not today. I was even thinking about exploring the town today, but only if the air clears.

April 25, 2005

More pictures.

I slept soo good last night, but I woke up a little early. After waking up, I watched a little TV and relaxed. I got up around 7am to get ready for work. Today is the first day at work here at Bangalore India. I didn’t know what to expect. After getting ready, my co-worker and I had breakfast before heading out. On the way to work, I saw the true India traffic. It was very packed and as usual, everyone was still driving like bats out of hell. Of course, that’s when traffic permits driving. There was nothing too unusual this morning that I didn’t see yesterday. Finally, after about 1 to 1.5 hours of driving in traffic, we arrived to work. This building actually is a new building and all the engineers and staff were just moved in about a week or two ago. The building was a little small but it was actually really nice. It seems like everyone had the latest and greatest when it came to the computer monitors, etc…

After work, we headed to Commercial. It was a placed called Krishna’s something, I can’t remember. It supposes to be one of the best places in town to shop for jewelry. I was looking for something for my mom for mother’s day. At this time, I was too tired to have patience to look for something nice. So I left and I will try again tomorrow. After that, I headed back to the room because I was REALLY tired. So I slept for about 4 hours. After waking from my beautiful sleep, I went to this very nice Vietnamese restaurant in the hotel area. Now I’m back at my room ready to go to sleep to be back at work tomorrow.

One thing I came to my mind today: Although India is very heavily dense and highly populated, there was no negative energy amongst the people. Although everyone was busy heading to his or her destination, I didn’t see no bickering or arguing. Everyone seem to be so “happy go lucky.” That was amazing to me. In the states where it is heavily populated and dense, you hear a lot of cussing, you see a lot of people arguing, and you can feel the negative energy.

Here are some pictures I took so far. This most likely be updated daily as I take more pictures.

April 22, 2005 (LA TIME)

The next few days, I will try to keep a daily journal of my trip to India. Today, my journey begins. I am leaving out of LAX to Chicago. After Chicago, my stops are London, Chennai, and Bangalore. My average lay over time is about 2 hours. So far, everything is going smooth, besides the crazy security wait at LAX. It took me about 30 to 40 minutes before I went through security check. I don’t recall such a long wait before. Maybe it’s different per airline. I will be arriving to Bangalore Sunday at 7:05 am (India Time). I have the slightest clue on what I am doing that Sunday. A co-worker of mines will be with me and he has been to India plenty of times. Hopefully, he can come up with an agenda for us.

April 24, 2005 9:45PM (India Time)
OK, this is the first time I had access to the Internet, so there is a lot to say (in so little time). So I don’t know where to begin. I guess I will start with my flight from Chicago to London Heathrow. This flight took about 7+ hours and it was good and smooth. Things started to get crazy once I landed. Since we were about 30 minutes late and my layover was about two hours, my time was limited to get to my next flight to Chennai. When I got to Heathrow, I was pretty confused. I finally figured out that my flight was at terminal 4. But to get to terminal 4, I had to take a shuttle. I didn’t expect that. Once on the shuttle and not knowing how long this shuttle was going to take to get me to terminal 4, I was a little concerned about time. We finally arrived to terminal 4 and I had to go through security. That went well. Finally, I found my flight with 20 minutes to spare. This flight was going to Chennai India in a 747. So we boarded. The first class seats in the 747 were quite different than the first class seats on the previous plain to Heathrow. These seats were more private and seated the opposite direction as the next, which I thought was cool. The flight from Heathrow to Chennai was 10 hours 45 minutes. Yikes. Luckily, this flight I meet up with my co-worker. I will get into “Luckily” in a second. The Chennai flight was not that bad because they had some really cool movies to watch and it was night pretty much the duration of the flight. The only bad experience I had on this flight was that I was experiencing major ear problems when the plane was descending. My ears were hurting pretty bad.

We finally landed in Chennai and exited. The first thing came to my head was WOO!!! This airport was deserted and the poverty showed. My co-worker and I had to go through the foreign immigration process before we proceed to the next flight to Bangalore. This went smoothly. Once this was finished, I had to pick up my checked-in luggage. I was a little worried about my luggage not being here because of all of the flight transitions from this point. By surprise, my luggage was there. “Yes”, I thought to myself. Finally, we had to go out the airport and back into the main entrance to attend our next flight. At this point, I was confused as hell. I thought to myself, “if my co-worker wouldn’t of meet me on this flight, I would be screwed right now.” That I why I said previously, I was lucky I meet him on this flight. He has done this trip about 4 to 5 times. So he knew all the ins and outs. After everything was said and done at the Chennai airport, we just waited for about 1.5 hours before the next flight. By this time, it was Sunday morning in India. So we finally boarded the Bangalore flight and on towards our destination.

:-) FINALLY!!!!! I am in Bangalore!!!!! 23 hours of pure flying and layovers!!!! My co-worker and I exited the plane and on towards our luggage pick-up. After picking up our luggage, we headed outside to see if our driver from the hotel was there. We were thinking that he wasn’t, especially since it was 7am Sunday morning. But by surprise, we saw our name (included my name “Mr. T Forby”) on a white board card. So the driver took our luggage and we than headed to the hotel. Now my trip begins and this is where it starts to get interesting. These people out here drive like bats out of hell. There are no concepts of rules, lights, tickets, and what ever else that we are restricted with here in the US. It’s funny because you see all the little mopeds with the whole families on them. I seen one moped with a husband, wife, and two kids… My mouth drop! And the driving here is crazy. My co-worker calls their driving “organized chaos” because they drive so crazy, but there are no accidents. I could have sworn I predicted about 100 accidents today, but there were NONE. As expected, I saw a lot of poverty. There were a lot of broken down buildings, people sitting and sleeping on the sidewalk.

Finally, we get to the hotel. It’s called the Taj West End. It’s a pretty nice hotel (besides the fact it is costing $310 a night). It is very tropical here, which I like. For the most part, the people here are really nice. All they do is call you “Sir” all day. So my co-worker and I departed to our rooms and decided to meet up at noon. I got to my room and it meets my expectation. The rooms here are nice and spacey. I had the room with the garden view. It is a really nice view.

After meeting up with my co-worker at noon, we went for lunch at the buffet at the hotel. The food was decent with a little spice to it. After lunch, we then went out to town for shopping. There are some positives and negatives when shopping out there. The positives are that, they offer drinks to you when you shop and some stores actually sit you down on a coach while they present different types of clothing for you to choose. The negative is that they give you as much buying pressure than a cars salesman.

After shopping, we then went to this exotic rug store. When we first got there, my co-worker notices that the prices were noted in American dollars instead of rupees. From that point, he knew their prices were going to be outrageous. So, a couple guys presented some Kashmir silk rugs. This one particular rug my co-worker like was quoted at 11K US dollars. He said he could get this same rug in the US for less than 2K. We then left the rug shop.

Now we are at present time as I speak. It is now Sunday, April 24 10:42pm. I just woke up after a beautiful 4-hour sleep. I don’t know if I want to go out tonight, or just stay in. But right now, I am tired of typing so I will let you guys go for the night. I will keep you guys posted daily (hopefully). I have 6 days left.

Good night

A good friend of mine, Hispanic Pundit, is trying to put together a conservative Hispanic brother hood specifically for Hispanic conservatives. This is something very similar to ”The Conservative Brotherhood.” So, if you are Hispanic and Conservative, then drop him a line if you are interested and I’m pretty sure he will get back at you. Good luck HP!!!

Here are some interesting statistics on the housing prices in San Diego:

• “San Diego County’s high housing prices, coupled with its relatively low wages, make it the second least affordable area in the country, the National Association of Home Builders reported.” (San Diego Union-Tribune, 1/7/05)
• The average new detached home in San Diego County sells for $781,000, the average new condominium for $490,000 and the average condo conversion unit for $303,000. (2/28/05, San Diego Business Journal/MarketPointe Realty Advisors.)
• San Diego County’s resale single family homes are at a record high median price of $530,000; the median resale price for condos is $380,000. (SDUT/DataQuick Information Systems, 2-11-05)
• The median price of housing in San Diego doubled between 2000 and 2004, but the median household income only increased 10.4 percent. (SDUT, 10/31/04)
• Just 11 percent of households are able to purchase the median-priced home, according to the California Association of Realtors. (North County Times, 2/11/05)
• According to the National Association of Realtors, “The median price of a single-family house [in San Diego] has increased $152,700 in the last year, or $418 per day.” (SDUT, 8/31/04)
• “’San Diego’s Housing Market is one of the most inflated in the country – a detrimental factor in terms of recruiting and retaining employees,’ said Kristine Norquist, Communications Manager for the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce.” (The Daily Transcript, 2/18/05.)
• “’Housing prices are too high for middle-income people,’ said Larry Fitch – the president of San Diego Workforce Partnership. ‘People are now living in Tijuana and Riverside and putting stress on our roads commuting to their jobs because they can’t afford homes in San Diego, and some people are leaving the area.’” (SDBJ, 1/17/05)
• Families have to make nearly $135,000 to afford median priced homes in San Diego. In other words, the median income of San Diego households is less than half what is needed to buy a median priced home. “The monthly income needed to buy a median-priced home in San Diego County rose to $134,420, from $109,130” from December 2003 to December 2004. (NCT, 2/11/05)
• In San Diego, 29 percent of residents are considering moving out of the state because of high housing prices, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. (SDUT, 11/18/04)

Los Angeles housing prices are very similar.

This goes to show the basic rule of supply and demand. Many people argue that house prices are too high and that the government should step in and do something about it. Yes it is expensive and no the government should not step in and intervene. Let the economy work itself out or move to where it is more affordable. Evidently, it is affordable if people are buying property like hot cakes at their current high prices.

People also mention about a housing bubble out here in San Diego, something similar to the San Jose’s (Silicon Valley) housing bubble. I think San Diego is different. Unlike Silicon Valley, San Diego is very diverse on income where as Silicon Valley’s primary income was the technology market. I am not saying that the housing in San Diego will not go down, I am saying it will not go down by much.

I would like to give much thanks to ”The Conservative Brotherhood” for letting me be part of their group. It is truly an honor to be associated with you guys. Thanks!

-BlackPundit

Next week, I will be traveling to Bangalore India. I am going there to train people to use some of my company’s in-house tools that I help developed. This should be an interesting trip for me. Besides some parts of Mexico, this will be my first experience in visiting a third world country.

I just received my shots a couple of days ago from the clinic at my job. It wasn’t too painful. But once I saw this blue war bag (as I call it) they were giving me, it scared the hell out of me. I asked the Doc, who is the bag for? He said it is yours. The first thing that came to my mind was, “Am I going to War?” This blue bag had all kinds of pills, bandages, and everything else you can think of. So I finally took the bag with a frown on my face. Hopefully I don’t need this bag!!!

The bad thing about the trip is that I have to take four flights to get to India. LA -> Chicago -> London -> Chennai, India -> Bangalore India. I guess because we set the travel at the last minute. On the way back, it won’t be too bad. I will have two flights, Bangalore India -> Germany -> LA.

I will try to give a daily journal on my trip if time permits.

Things have been so busy with me lately between school and work. I am taking this graduate level Algorithm class at UCSD and I can see this is going to be a tuff class. No sleeping in this class and no easy ‘A’ for me. Also, it is going to really suck when I go to India for a week and the second homework assignment is due that Tuesday when I get back. How am I going to pull this off? Well besides all of my hard work, I do play a lot when I get the chance. I ride my motorcycle almost every day, especially with the high cost of gas. I guess supply and demand is kicking in big time now. I have a Nissan Titan and that thing gets like 13 miles to the gallon. That sucks!!! I hardly ever drive it now.

Here is a picture of my Suzuki GSXR-1000 and I. I was just messing around in my garage when I took the picture.

Ok, I thought I found a solution for getting rid of spam comments by using AuthImage. I guess not. I am getting a lot of spam Trackbacks now. Does anyone have a solution for spam Trackbacks? This spam stuff is getting out of control and is very annoying.