POLITICAL: State of Civil Rights

http://townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2009/02/25/a_nation_of_cowards

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

A Nation of Cowards

by Walter E. Williams :: Townhall.com Columnist

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The bottom line is that the civil rights struggle is over and it is won. At one time black Americans didn’t share the constitutional guarantees shared by whites; today we do. That does not mean that there are not major problems that confront a large segment of the black community, but they are not civil rights problems nor can they be solved through a “conversation on race.” Black illegitimacy stands at 70 percent; nearly 50 percent of black students drop out of high school; and only 30 percent of black youngsters reside in two-parent families. In 2005, while 13 percent of the population, blacks committed over 52 percent of the nation’s homicides and were 46 percent of the homicide victims. Ninety-four percent of black homicide victims had a black person as their murderer. Such pathology, I think much of it precipitated by family breakdown, is entirely new among blacks. In 1940, black illegitimacy was 19 percent; in 1950, only 18 percent of black households were female-headed compared with today’s 70 percent. Both during slavery and as late as 1920, a teenage girl raising a child without a man present was rare among blacks.

If black people continue to accept the corrupt blame game agenda of liberal whites, black politicians and assorted hustlers, as opposed to accepting personal responsibility, the future for many black Americans will remain bleak.

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I like Walter Williams. He calls them as he sees them.

One of his most memorable quotes was: “The primary victims of Philadelphia’s public schools are black students whose chances for upward mobility are being systematically destroyed by callous politicians and teacher’s unions. If the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan set out to destroy black academic excellence in Philadelphia, I doubt whether he could achieve as much damage.”

Yup, I sneer at the Islamic fundamentalists, who in denying women their right “to be all they can be”, “poke out their own eye”. They deny themselves the productivity of half their “human resources”.

But, here at home, we are doing something similar to all the minority children as well as most of the non-minority.

We are criminally stupid allowing the gooferment to be involved in education. Specicially the politicians and the teacher’s union should be the outlaws!

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POLITICAL: Poor Economy and the Gooferment

http://irisheagle.blogspot.com/2009/03/its-not-all-media-hype.html

Wednesday, March 04, 2009

It’s not all media hype

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Twice this past weekend I found myself talking to two men – separate conversations – who believe that the “economic crisis” is mostly media hype. “They’ve got to sell papers”, is what one of them told me.

I didn’t know what to say. As someone who’s fairly well convinced that we’re heading down and fast I didn’t know where to start. I simply let each of them say what they had in mind and walked on. I was shocked. I have no idea what these men do for a living, but I hope to God they’re right. I’m sure they’re wrong, but I hope they’re right.

Today the news is full of the “mini-budget” or emergency budget or whatever you want to call it coming at the end of the month. I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for waiting a month – having been about 4 months late realizing how bad things are – but it’s lost to me. I can’t understand why they don’t just impose the tax hikes right now. What does the state gain from such a delay?

There’s a small part of me wondering if there isn’t something bigger being planned for the economy than 2c extra on the tax rates.

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Comment

It’s bad, there’s no denying that – but there is an element of Chicken Littleism to the media reporting, the herd pack mentality running headlong off the cliff together. The media moves its focus in shifts, and now the hot story of the moment is the sky falling; you have to sift to get the nuance and balance that goes beyond the populist trend. So yeah, I’d agree that we aren’t getting a true picture of what is going on. The media is a populist beast.

Carrie

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MY RESPONSE:

Well, there is a measure of truth to the “hype” argument. If you extract the financial firms from the indexes, the numbers don’t look absolutely terrible. It’s the options and derivatives that are putting downward pressure on the market. Where everyone of the experts really “stepped in it” imho is the failure to use bankruptcy as “medicine”. If they (the gooferment) had said “Sorry, corporations can use the Chapter 11 or one of the other options.”, then there would have been some immediate pain, but it would have been over. Quick and clean. The gooferment could have properly provided the bankruptcy judge with transitional financing assistance to the debtors taking over.

Bet there would have been a lot more serious consideration of the corporation’s options. After all, hard to be an executive if there’s nothing to be an executive up. THe law and implications are well understood.

AND, the market would have formed of “carrior eaters” who would “feast” on the “bones”. A tranche of mortgages would have gotten a quick proctology exam to determine what was good and what was toxic. Various vultures would have bid on the “remains”. The results would have been well-known.

The real estate bubble would have been popped and, while traumatic, it wouldn’t be in “limbo”. That’s why the Street is reacting badly. Uncertainty.

And the gooferment acts like they could NOT find their own A Double Q in a dark closet with a flashlight. This is like the Great Depression in that the gooferment interference in the marketplace is making the problem worse.

My fear is we are going to have a gooferment induced “Lost Decade” for the next 20 years. Like Japan.

Argh!

reinkefj 03.04.09 – 11:37 am

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