Know Who is Speaking for You, What They Can Do, and What They Have Done

Because we do not have the manpower to create an adequate database of every political office in America (that amount is estimated to be well over 500,000) we will be focusing on Senators, Representatives, and Presidential Candidates (As well as Presidents).   We will expand our database as manpower becomes available with the hopes of creating a tool that is useful for local elections as well as national elections.  The Grading system that we present for each person goes from "A" to "F" in typical academic fashion and represents our determination of their friendliness to the Black Community in America going back 10 years (for right now this is based purely on Political Activity and not on rhetoric).  Those that don't have grades because we have not reviewed them are marked blank.  Those that have done nothing are marked are marked "F" the same as those that have taken numerous actions against the community.  The reason for this is that we feel that by doing nothing they enable those who have malicious intent and are by that reasoning just as guilty.  

We are in no way endorsing any candidates with these grades.  We are simply assessing their friendliness to the community as demonstrated through past political activity.  These grades are offered as a tool to help people in the community make up their minds as to who they will support.  We do encourage people to become familiar with the political process, especially at the local level.  As mentioned earlier there are well over 500,000 elected positions in this country and more than 95% of them are local positions.  This means that in order for the community to have a voice political, we must get involved in local elections.

Representatives

Senators

The United States operates using a Bicameral Legislature.  This basically means we have 2 different bodies lawmakers.  The Upper Body is referred to as the Senate and the Lower Body is referred to as the House of Representatives.   The House of Representatives was designed to respond to the public quickly, this is why house members only have a 2 year term (every seat in the house is up every 2 years).  The Senate on the other hand was designed to have a more long term view and create some consistency in government, this is why they have a 6 year term (the Senate is broken into 3 equal classes with all the members of 1 class being up for election every 2 years).  The House of Representatives currently has 435 voting seats but this number changes with the population, the Senate on the other hand is locked at 100 with each state getting 2 Senators (for this to change the number of states would have to change).  

The major differences between the two in terms of operation and authority are that the House is responsible for initiating all revenue based bills.   This means things like raising taxes are submitted and initiated by the House and then sent to the senate for approval.   The Senate has the sole responsibility of approving the foreign treaties, appointments to Presidential Cabinets and the Supreme Court, as well as other judicial Nominations.  For more information on the differences there are a number of websites you could utilize starting with this one.