WILLIAM REED

(NNPA)—“Direct my footsteps according to your Word”—Psalm 119:133
The gospel song, “Order My Feet in Your Word,” happens to be a popular tune. It’s a good theme for life and a personal request to God to “Prepare my goings in your paths and not let evil rule over me.” However, to impose order on “your steps” requires practical techniques and applications.
What procedures are involved if you want to “walk worthy” through life? A new and empowering book titled, “The Spirit Within: Embracing God’s Living Spirit for a Healthier Life,” just might be the answer. It’s a timely guide that helps readers “order” their lives in both practical and spiritual ways. Author Alan E. Miller said, “Knowledge of God and his works in your life is empowering.” Miller said, “You can enjoy a healthy life by having an accurate view of God in your heart and mind and letting that shape your life every day.”
In Africans’ traditional life, spirituality is the foundation of one’s being. A believer’s destiny is bound up in spiritual pursuits throughout his life. In contemporary America, many Blacks search for their “spiritual enlightenment” and “true selves.” But, empowerment is achieved only through utilization of fundamental leadership and management techniques. In the book, “The Spirit Within,” Miller shows readers “how to walk” in productive and spiritual ways. The book provides a combination of plans for one’s life, scripture references, and exercises to refresh your spirit, refine your life, and refocus your goals and passions.

Miller said that “inspirational and religious book buyers, church members and leaders” are the target audience. He said it is a valuable tool that “no home should be without” and that “it should be read by every house member.”  He said the book’s “first-hand accounts of spirituality” can lead to “better, healthier lifestyles.” In the “Spirit Scripture Index” section, readers can find a complete list of spiritual references that appear throughout the Bible.
Traditional and contemporary studies relate happiness, morale, and health to spirituality. Many older Blacks are saying that “religion helps them cope or adapt with losses or difficulties.”  For insights on “the Spirit inside each of us,” Black church groups, book clubs, parents and student groups, or other gatherings, should give Miller a call. Instead of booking the local TV weatherman, church members, business executives and organizations would do well in their outreach, training, spiritual coaching and fundraising utilizing Miller and his publication for their programs. In conjunction with the publication, the Miller Group also offers one-day seminars comprised of discussion groups, testimonies, and spiritual awareness sessions.
“Freedom begins with the freeing of the mind and soul” said Miller. Regarded as a modern-day Renaissance man, Miller is an artist, published poet, accomplished playwright and a corporate diversity marketing counselor. Miller’s also a certified “Fruit of the Spirit” instructor. Better grounded than those whose job it is just to read the news on TV, Miller knows how to help navigate obstacles and chart paths to solid solutions. He appears on news networks and his writings have been featured in national publications. Miller has spoken at numerous seminars and taught business, diversity and entrepreneurial leadership classes across America.  He’s created, developed and implemented Diversity Marketing program activities among industry and church audiences.
Miller’s email is This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Successful marketing programs Miller has introduced are currently helping numerous religious and political organizations attract more members, connect with visitors and craft mission statements, core values, and branding. He and his organization can help you to create unique strategic plans to grow your organization or institution. The kind of special events the Miller Group can help create include extravaganzas such as gala dinner-dances, concerts, cruises, and major sporting events.
(William Reed is head of the Business Exchange Network and available for speaking/seminar projects through the Bailey Group.org.)

CHARLENE CROWELL

(NNPA)—Although Feb. 14 is typically remembered for Valentine Day, this year that date brought new findings on the cumulative costs of the Great Recession—$13 trillion in cumulative losses in household wealth and high unemployment are the result of the Great Recession, according to a new Government Accountability Office.
Earlier research by the Center for Responsible Lending found that the spillover effects of foreclosures wiped out nearly $2 trillion in family wealth. From 2000-2010, African-American family wealth dropped 53 percent, and Hispanic families lost 66 percent. By comparison, average White household wealth dropped only 16 percent. The foreclosure crisis and resulting economic downturn have turned back the clock on previous wealth gains, especially in communities of color.
The GAO report was performed at the request of the Senator Tim Johnson (SD), chair of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, and Rep. Michael Capuano (Mass., the ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance.

Responding to the report’s findings, Capuano said, “I thank the GAO for this comprehensive report. Millions of Americans lost their homes to foreclosure, Millions more lost retirement savings and too many Americans found themselves unemployed. . . Any costs associated with implementing Dodd-Frank pale in comparison to the trillions of dollars in losses that have already occurred. Congress must ensure that Dodd-Frank is implemented comprehensively and effectively so that the tools are in place to prevent another crisis.”
Despite the independent, non-partisan GAO findings, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau opponents insistently call for changes to Bureau, the centerpiece of Dodd-Frank Reform. These critics either do not know or are ignoring how the Bureau returned $425 million in consumer refunds and levied another $70 million in fines for abusive financial practices.
Nor would these critics likely acknowledge that new CFPB rules will ensure that no mortgage borrower will be given an unaffordable and unsustainable loan. Thanks to CFPB, each lender is now required to determine and verify borrowers’ ability to repay before the loan is issued. Additionally, consumer-friendly changes in mortgage servicing means borrowers will no longer incur costly surprises with their loans or be given a runaround by a servicer.
Had CFPB and these mortgage rules existed before the housing crisis hit, communities of color would not have been financially devastated. Every consumer can be encouraged by the Bureau’s actions to increase greater transparency in financial services, coupled with common sense rules of the road. America’s families need nothing less.
Responsible businesses have recently begun speaking up in defense of CFPB. For example, John Arensmeyer, founder and chief executive of the Small Business Majority, recently said, “The financial industry wrote its own rules for too long. Honesty and transparency are not too much to ask from institutions that helped run the economy into the ground. Lawmakers—many of whom talk a lot about protecting small businesses—should be the first in line asking for more accountability.”
The U.S. Senate is charged to advise and consent on presidential nominees. On Valentine’s Day more than half—54 in all—wrote to President Obama to express their strong support for the CFPB and Director Richard Cordray.
(Charlene Crowell is a communications manager with the Center for Responsible Lending. She can be reached at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .)

by David Goldman 
BARCELONA, Spain (CNNMoney)—AT&T would like everything you own to connect to its network, and it wants all those connected possessions to show up on your monthly wireless bill.
It’s not as audacious as it sounds. Smartphones and tablets are hardly the only wirelessly connected gizmos anymore.
Everything from medicine to door locks to dog collars are connected to wireless networks nowadays. Even cars have essentially become smartphones on wheels.
AT&T says this new “Internet of Everything” presents a path for the company to become far more ingrained in its customers lives. And with its new Mobile Share plans that give you one data bucket for all your connected gizmos, AT&T expects to profit. Customers will have to pay AT&T for all the new gadgets they’ll be connecting and all the new services the company will be providing.
“We’re sitting on the greatest growth opportunity in history,” said Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T Mobility, in an interview with CNNMoney. “With Mobile Share, we don’t care so much anymore about what you’re doing on the network ... but all those things like cars and home security are where the monetization opportunity is.”
At the Mobile World Congress wireless technology conference on Monday, AT&T announced a perfect example of this evolving strategy: a partnership with General Motors to provide 4G service for the car company’s OnStar service.
It was hardly just an announcement about directions and automatic accident reporting. AT&T will be selling a service that can make your Chevy into a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot. The telecom giant will also soon start selling a U-Verse service that streams TV to the back seat of equipped GM cars.
GM said it believes more than 50 percent of its cars will have wireless capabilities by 2015.
“Everyone is going to be impacted by this sooner rather than later,” said de la Vega.

Connected cars are just the tip of the iceberg. Last year, AT&T unveiled a home security service that allows users to control their home’s lights, alarm systems, locks and doors from a tablet or smartphone. A year earlier, the company showed off pill bottles that send text messages to remind people to take their medications.
“At AT&T, our goal is to wirelessly enable everything,” said Glenn Lurie, AT&T’s vice president of partnerships, at a press conference on Monday.
These new services may be useful, but they’re also changing our behavior on the mobile Internet. Consumers are downloading more and more data as a greater number of things become connected and mobile broadband speeds become blazing fast with the nationwide rollouts of 4G networks.
In its latest annual Visual Networking Index, Cisco predicted that the average American will use 6.2 GB of data on their mobile devices each month by 2017. To put that into context, Americans used just 752 MB on average last year.
If data plans stay the same five years down the road, the average user’s smartphone bill could grow by $40 a month.
Not to worry, AT&T says. There are as many smart people thinking about how to solve the wireless data overload issue as there are people working up new ways to connect to the network.
“Don’t give up on technology innovators,” said de la Vega. “As we’ve seen major technology shifts in the past five years, from 2G to 3G to 4G, the cost per megabyte has always come down. We have to make these services affordable for customers, or else it will be impossible to use them.”

DAMON CARR

The Pennsylvania Lottery has a slogan—“Proceeds benefit older Pennsylvanians.” The PA Lottery boast of the fact that it’s the only lottery in the nation that exclusively targets all of it proceeds to programs for older residents. Clearly the Pennsylvania Lottery understands its core market—POOR and OLD People. Studies have shown that ZIP codes that spend four times what anyone else does are those in lower-income parts of town. This article is in no way an attempt to attack the Pennsylvania lottery in and of it-self. This article is written to heighten awareness that all forms gambling including bingo, lottery and casinos are a tax on poor and older people.
Financial Guru Dave Ramsey teaches if you want to be rich, do what rich people do and if you want to be poor do what poor people do. Having been raised by poor people and most of my closest friends being poor people, naturally my wife and I have some poor people habits and tendencies. My wife claims that she enjoys bingo and I claim to enjoy going to casinos. I have had the opportunity to frequent various bingo halls and casinos over the years. As I began to learn how money works and began to hear that gambling is a tax on the poor, I began to pay attention to the people that filled the bingo halls and casinos. As you look at the people passing by, it’s easy to see that a great majority of the people who frequent bingo halls and casinos are aging people. As I begin to strike up conversation with people at these places it became obvious that many come from low-income communities. If you’re ever at a convenience store, gas station or grocery store that sells lottery tickets, pay attention to the long lines. You can easily identify most of the patrons buying lottery tickets are old and poor people.

My observation forced me to think back to my childhood. I was brought up in an impoverished community.  I grew up watching my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends and neighbors engaging in lottery, bingo, casinos and other forms of gambling on a daily basis. It’s mind boggling as I think back and reflect on how much money was and continues to be spent trying to make a come-up gambling their money away. I’ve watched people sacrifice bill money hoping they’ll win so that they can recoup the bill money plus have some extra money to spend. I’ve watched people spend way too much money on dream books, lucky candles, and other merchandises as if these merchandises will give them some advantage. I’ve witness first hand close relatives spending $20.00 per day on the lottery (before they had mid-day lottery), $40.00 per day on bingo and roughly $150 every two months at casinos. That equals $375 per month spent on gambling each in every month for the past 30-years of my life. The sad reality is that over the 30-year period that I’ve watched and continue to watch my close relatives engage in the lottery, bingo, casinos and other forms of gambling—They are still POOR PEOPLE.
Mathematically and statically speaking gambling is a rip-off and is a tax on the poor. Consider the size of the various casinos and the lavish decoration. Who’s paying for it? Many churches today and other organizations profit dearly from proceeds from bingo. Who’s paying for it? I had a friend who owned a small convenience store. He told me that the lottery was his best marketing tool. It attracted a lot of traffic to the store. People spent massive amounts on the lottery and the traffic helped him moved other products off of the shelf. Research has shown that ZIP codes in the low-income parts of town spend four times more than anyone else. My own eyesight has witnessed that the majority of the people who fill the bingo halls, casinos and lottery lines are older people. Gambling of all forms is a tax on the poor. It’s interesting to note that 96 percent of those age 65 or older are BROKE.
Just think if my close relatives who individually spend roughly $375 per month on the lottery, bingo, casinos and other forms of gambling for the past 30 years had hid the money under a mattress today that monthly amount would equal $135,000. If they had invested the $375 each and every month in mutual funds earning an average rate of return of 10-percent for the past 30-years their money would have grown to $847,683. The irony is that if they had saved and/or invested the money each and every month instead of gambling it away for the past 30 years and counting, today they would no longer be poor people.
My wife and I at one time justified our casino and bingo activity as a form of entertainment. It turns out that we were losing money in the name of entertainment.  
(Mortgage and Money Coach Damon is the owner of ACE Financial. He can be reached at 412-216-1013.)