Ken Padgett

Ken Padgett Historian - Freelance Writer - Webmaster San Diego, CA Talking about myself in the third person and the constant repetition of my name might sound like a bad case of megalomania, but it's just "spider food" for search engines. Kenneth William Padgett Biography Ken Padgett was born in California. His father was career Navy and his mother was a housewife. Ken's parents were separated when he was only four years old and his mom moved the family from Florida to a Washington DC area suburb in Maryland. They were divorced soon after. His mom went to work at the Census Bureau Publications Group and stayed there till she retired. Ken's first job was working as a shoe shine boy at "Frank's Barber Shop" at the tender age of 13. At 14, an opportunity came up to take on a friend's paper route so he quit Frank's. A couple of months later he was offered an adjoining paper route and a chance to work on a truck early Sunday mornings as a "j...

  Al Jolson in Wonder Bar 1934 I run a YouTube channel that hosts clips of major stars wearing blackface in movies and TV. These clips are important because of their historical and cultural value, and should be available to the general public. Most of them are available now, but for how long? At any time the studios can change their minds about allowing these clips and take down my entire channel with a series of copyright strikes.  After getting a copyright strike, you can argue it should be considered "Fair Use for Educational Purposes" but that won't change YouTube's mind, because they don't want to get in the middle. You can also appeal to the owners of the media who file the claim, but they have no incentive to agree to any Fair Use.  The only other option is to dispute the claim with YouTube and then prepare for a copyright lawsuit from a media company. Testing your claim in court would likely not go well, because the media corporations have tailored the c...

  Summary:  The problems that justify reparations should be solved before you start the reparations Reparations are intended to compensate African-Americans whose ancestors were slaves and lived through the Jim Crow era.  According to the NAACP, "Reparations would involve a national apology, rights to the cannabis industry, financial payment, social service benefits, and land grants to every descendant of an enslaved African American and Black person a descendant of those living in the United States including during American slavery until the Jim Crow era in1965." Opponents say is that it's "impossible to place a monetary value on the impact of slavery"   Actually some people in San Francisco have placed a monetary value on the impact of slavery: Here are some of the more than 100 recommendations made by a city-appointed reparations committee: Payments of $5 million to every eligible Black adult, the elimination of personal debt and tax burdens, guaranteed annua...

  Higher education should be free, but it's not, and not likely to be anytime soon. We're blowing a bunch of money already, so why not give these people a break? Because paying off a bunch of student loans now will only make higher education more expensive for those who follow.   Lots of deserving people are mired in debt and would love some help too. How easy will it be for Republicans to use this to divide people?  When measured by income, the poorest one-fifth of Americans hold about 8 percent of all student debt in America. In contrast, the wealthiest one-fifth of American households have a third of all student debt. If you want to fix some things, and many things need fixing, maybe don't start with a cohort that is so easily portrayed by the other side as elite, when you couldn't even keep the COVID-era SNAP payments going. As a result of Democrats failure to protect children, 30 million Americans lost the help they desperately need to feed their hungry childr...