The Group of 20 (G20) Summit was developed in order to sustain a dying economic Asian world. The G20 is made up of 19 countries plus the European Union.

The “member” countries are as follows — (a-keep in mind that nations in the African Union are merely invited “guests” to the G20 Summits) – not permanent members and (b-South Africa does NOT represent all of the continent of Africa, but only as it pertains to European, Saudi, and Asian dominance in the sustainable global markets):

Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union.

In 2009, Gary Shapiro, President of the Consumer Electronics Association sat in a D.C. presidential sidechair in his office and gave the President of the United States what appeared to be some insight into the economic faux pas that progressives appeared to be wandering away from exports and technological advances in global markets in favor of some introspection about what we are doing about the job market right here in the United States.

Global and world trade is all good, but when you’re talking empowering other countries with technological advances that we don’t have in the United States – along with some big idea that it is going to spur and shore up the American economy – let’s just say that Shapiro may be just a little bit wrong on that count. Lifting other nations out of poverty when there are still people reeking in it in YOUR country has never been a good idea, unless you are the kind of man who goes off to take care of someone else’s children when your own are without proper food, clothing and housing.

If Shapiro had looked a little deeper, like us intellects do, he would have known that because America does NOT invest enough in INFRASTRUCTURE … there will BE no exports, because nobody will have a way to get anything IN here, or to get anything out of here.

He said “the past 15 years” (1994-2009) had proven that people in poverty-stricken countries could be lifted out of that poverty by technology. Technology like, for instance, “healthcare kiosks.” When was the last time you saw a “healthcare kiosk” in America, and if you did, who manufactured it? (Johnson Controls? Made in America? Cisco?)

He was talking healthcare kiosks for people who have less than one-fifth the doctors we do, and at a time when America’s healthcare system was screwed up and in total disarray and sinking like the Titanic, which -on Shapiro’s watch- might have been built with those itty-bitty little rudders for “maximum cost efficiency.”

Shapiro wanted healthcare kiosks in Burkina Faso and Mali, we wanted healthCARE in America. The fact that we HAVE doctors in this country didn’t mean we had equal access to healthcare, let alone a kiosk with which to look them up.

Yes, it is true that Silicon Valley, the technology capital of America, was having a field day in the 1990s. .com’s were a-blooming and a-mushrooming out of anywhere and everywhere.

America made some overnight millionaires of some of the youngest [mostly white, Asian and Indian] players in the high-tech industry at the time. A new one still sprouts around these parts from time to time.

That all ended in 2000, with the selection of George W. Bush as President. Shortly after he was elected, the nation fell apart on his watch. And he let it fall. For the “greater good” and all that bull-hockey. So if Shapiro was gunning for technological advances in other countries in 2009, at a time when America was hurting for jobs and healthcare, and dragging up the rear-end of ongoing gosh-awful war-torn years in Afghanistan and Iraq, what does that tell you about the priority chain for working Black Americans?

G20 Summits: Got a plane ticket and chair at that l- o- n- g bosses’ table? Got milk?

Technology. For real.

Remember when America went to beatching about the G20 Summit when Hillary Clinton was trying to boost it as a “benefit” of some kind to America’s waning job market? Well, America was bleeding jobs through the nose and H.C. was talking global economies as if she didn’t notice that our own people were kinda mad at her and for husband for helping to leak so many jobs out of the country that got us in this national economic disaster in the first place.

Black America and STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine (I substituted the word “Math” for Medicine, simply because science, technology, engineering AND medicine are ALL math sciences).

Forget about ALL the G20 meetings Black America missed prior to October 2014. Let’s talk about what happened this month. In Washington, DC. The moneyed and powerful were talking INFRASTRUCTURE. Big time.

It was the very thing President Obama came off the campaign trail and told us was a HUGE issue: America’s infrastructure. He wasn’t wrong then, and he still isn’t wrong now. Did he say something about BUDGET?

Listen in: March 2009

Listen in AGAIN — May 2014

One wonders why he is having such a hard time selling this when it’s supposedly mostly BLACK PEOPLE who are out of work?

America’s infrastructure, as of 2013: We have, oh let’s see, a D+ in GPA score, a grade somewhere between poor and mediocre. Why?

Aviation – D

Bridges – C+

Dams – D

Drinking Water – D

Energy – D+

Hazardous Waste – D

Inland Waterways – D-

Levees – D- (watch out New Orleans!)

Ports – C

Public Parks and Recreation – C-

Rail – C+

Roads – D

Schools – D

Solid Waste – B- (because we *heart* solid waste)

Transit – D

Wastewater – D

Estimated investment need by 2020? $3.6 Trillion. USD, or Euro, the way things are looking right now.

What does all of that mean to Black America? Nothing but some little ol’ teeny-weeny jobs, MILLIONS OF THEM, in America. But eff the Jobs Act. Who the hell needs jobs with all these LLLAAAAZZYYY (squawk!) Black people in America on food stamps? (not.) And guess what, the biggest bitchers and complainers and whiners ain’t hiring, ain’t paying crap if they are hiring, and voted against your healthcare benefits, TOO – if they happen to toss your no-working ass a bone.

—

Aviation – D. Black folks don’t own too many airports in America, but we work in them. How many Black-owned aviation companies does America have, by the way?

Bridges – C+. We don’t own many or mostly any companies that build bridges, but we drive on them. Where da Black engineers? You trusting this kind of isht to folks who can’t even get it right in AFGHANISTAN.

Dams – D. Dam, I don’t know of any Black or minority-owned dam companies, but if they’re out there, not too many of us tend to live near dams, anyway. Engineering – see ‘Bridges’ above.

Drinking water – D – Well, hell’s bells, there’s a HUMONGOUS BIGGIE in Black America. Or it should be?, especially after that mess they tried to pull off in Michigan this past summer. Cutting people’s water off like God gave ’em permission, they did.

Energy? – D+ We CONSUME a lot of it! How many of us work in the energy industries, or own any energy companies?

Hazardous Waste – D. Environmental work, again.

By the time we get around to hearing about hazardous waste, we’re just kind of waiting for the dump trucks to come around town and show us what our parks and neighborhoods really mean to them. In one particular border city in Texas, mostly a white area for a change — residents in that area were complaining because the dumping ground of choice became their residential area. Where’d they get the garbage? The toxins were being hauled in from as far away as New York City. Whew! New York. CITY. If you’ve ever been to that big stinky ratty city … well, you know.

The mayor of New York doesn’t have to live with that.

Inland waterways? – D- Jobs, jobs and more jobs. You know any Black folk looking for work at the inland waterways? There ought to be a BOATload of them available, but hell, we can’t swim, right?

Levees – D-. More engineering work.

Too many of us didn’t start a conversation about Levees until the ones in New Orleans burst. Then Black people went to running trying to get the hell out of there, and were gunned down like they were lower than dogs on their way out. How in the HELL does America come up with a D- in LEVEES with a BUNCH OF FOLKS in New Orleans out of work?

Ports – C. It ain’t good, but it ain’t bad, either. What kinds of jobs are available hooking up our ports and waterways around the nation? We have plenty of them … Gulf of Mississippi, Atlantic, Pacific, Great Lakes, North Pacific, North Atlantic, Bering Strait … oh sorry, not US. That’s that other country called Alaska.

Public Parks and Recreation – C-. We love love love our parks. How many Black people we got employed in parks and recreation? How many we got with parks and recreation contracts from the federal government?

Rail – C+ That one, a lot of people don’t get. AND MORE ENGINEERING.

We don’t have much going on in America by way of digital and electronic high-tech train transport. The speediest thing we have is Amtrak, which is nothing CLOSE to Eurail in Europe. We are still too stuck on locomotives and steam engines, trying to relive a past that is never coming back, instead of sailing and speeding full steam ahead into the future where JOB CREATION is still waiting for someone to knock on the door and ring the bell.

Roads – D. Ding dong. Rail, roads, railroads. Roads in the infrastructure. In places like New York, L.A. and Atlanta, there is constant road construction and reconstruction going on, yet people are out of work and nothing ever seems to get finished being built or paved over. “Well, Huffy, we just got through digging up that there road up yonder, so since it’s looking all nice and smooth now and we’re almost finished with it, let’s dig it up and start over.”

Schools – D.
Hey, hey, hey! We got A WHOLE LOT OF STUFF WE CAN SAY ABOUT SCHOOLS, especially in Black America. Like why in the hell is America working D’s in schools in this whole infrastructure thing? Some REAL Black child somewhere got a better grade than that in MATH!

Solid waste – B-. Could be better, but out of all the stuff going on in infrastructure, this is where we get the highest grade. Wonder why? Full of shyt?

Transit – D. “See Rail” and “Roads.” Might want to see “Ports” and “Inland Waterways” while you’re at it. It’s all transit, roads, airways, waterways, whatever.

Wastewater – D. B- in solid waste, D in wasteWATER. Hm. That’s scary as hell, a whole one-grade difference between solid waste and wastewater. Like WHERE THE HELL ARE THEY DUMPING THE SOLID WASTE? Am I effin’ drinking it?!

***

Rebuilding infrastructure should NOT be a partisan issue, as President Obama said. Especially not to US, and with so many Black people in need of training and THOSE jobs. A CEO like Shapiro wouldn’t know nothing about that.

This is why, Black Americans, you are the only one who can put the REAL linchpin in removing the “Do-Nothing Congress” headed up by John Boehner’s Senate.

It’s now or never, or you can expect a worse economy as soon as President Obama is gone in 2016. They are banking on it and banking on using that leverage to tell us that President Obama failed.

But that would be OUR fault for allowing “sabotage ethics” and obstructionist Tea to invade Congress in 2010.

538: Midterms 2014 – ROCK THE VOTE: Get the Tea Out of Congress