Liberals are using black people as stalking horses

Liberals are using black people as stalking horses

Back in the day, when hunting was the major source of food, hunters often used stalking horses as a means of sneaking up on their quarry. They would walk on the opposite side of the horse until they were close enough to place a good shot on whatever they were hunting. A stalking horse not only concealed them but also, if their target was an armed man and they were discovered, would take the first shot. That’s what blacks are to liberals and progressives in their efforts to transform America – stalking horses.

Let’s look at some of the ways white liberals use black people. One of the more obvious ways is for liberals to equate any kind of injustices suffered by homosexuals and women to the black struggle for civil rights. But it is just plain nonsense to suggest any kind of equivalency between the problems of homosexuals and women and the centuries of slavery followed by Jim Crow, lynching, systematic racial discrimination and the blood, sweat and tears of the black civil rights movement.

The largest and most powerful labor union in the country is the National Education Association, with well over 3 million members. Teachers benefit enormously from their education monopoly. It yields higher pay and lower accountability. It’s a different story for a large percentage of black people who receive fraudulent education. The NEA’s white liberals – aided by black teachers, politicians and so-called black leaders – cooperate to ensure that black parents who want their children to have a better education have few choices.

Whenever there has been a serious push for school choice, educational vouchers, tuition tax credits or even charter schools, the NEA has fought against it. One of the more callous examples of that disregard for black education was New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s cutback on funding for charter schools where black youngsters were succeeding in getting a better education. That was de Blasio’s way of paying back New York’s teachers union for the political support it gave him in his quest for the mayor’s office.

White liberals in the media and academia, along with many blacks, have been major supporters of the recent marches protesting police conduct. A man from Mars, knowing nothing about homicide facts, would conclude that the major problem black Americans have with murder and brutality results from the behavior of racist policemen. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there are about 200 police arrest-related deaths of blacks each year (between 300 and 400 for whites). That number pales in comparison with the roughly 7,000 annual murders of blacks, 94 percent of which are committed by blacks. The number of blacks being murdered by other blacks is of little concern to liberals. Their agenda is to use arrest-related deaths of blacks to undermine established authority.

Liberals often have demeaning attitudes toward blacks. When Secretary of State John Kerry was a U.S. senator, in a statement about so many blacks being in prison, he said, “That’s unacceptable, but it’s not their fault.” Would Kerry also say that white prison inmates are also faultless? Johns Hopkins University sociologist Andrew Cherlin told us: “It has yet to be shown that the absence of a father was directly responsible for any of the supposed deficiencies of broken homes. ... (The problem) is not the lack of male presence but the lack of male income.” The liberal vision is that fathers and husbands can be replaced by a welfare check.

Liberals desperately need blacks. If the Democratic Party lost just 30 percent of the black vote, it would mean the end of the liberal agenda. That means blacks must be kept in a perpetual state of grievance in order to keep them as a one-party people in a two-party system. When black Americans finally realize how much liberals have used them, I’m betting they will be the nation’s most conservative people. Who else has been harmed as much by liberalism’s vision and agenda?
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University and a syndicated columnist.

Obamacare and High cost deductibles crippling middle class

High cost deductibles crippling middle class

Coverage requires workers to pay so much that many just skip visits to doctor

By Laura Ungar and Jayne O’Donnell

Physician Praveen Arla is witnessing a reversal of health care fortunes: Poor, long uninsured patients are getting Medicaid through Obamacare and finally coming to his office for care. But middle-class workers are increasingly staying away.

“It’s flip-flopped,” says Arla, who helps his father run a family practice in Hillview, Ky. Patients with job-based plans, he says, will say, “My deductible is so high. I’m trying to come to the doctor as little as possible. … What is the minimum I can get done? They’re really worried about cost.”

It’s a deep and common concern across the USA, where employer plans cover 60% of working-age Americans, or about 150 million people. Coverage long considered the gold standard of health insurance often requires workers to pay so much out-ofpocket that many skip doctor visits, put off medical procedures and ration pills, much as the uninsured have done.

A recent Commonwealth Fund survey found that four in 10 working-age adults skipped some kind of care because of cost.  The portion of workers with annual deductibles — what consumers must pay before insurance kicks in — rose from 55% eight years ago to 80% today, according to research by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

A Mercer study showed that 2014 saw the largest one-year increase in enrollment in “high-deductible plans” — from 18% to 23% of all covered employees.

The size of the average deductible more than doubled in eight years, from $584 to $1,217 for individual coverage. Add to this co-pays, co-insurance and the price of drugs or procedures not covered, and it’s all too much for many Americans.

Holly Wilson of Denver, a communication company fraud investigator, recently went without her blood pressure pills for three months because she couldn’t afford them, given her $2,500 deductible. Her blood pressure shot so high, her doctor told her she risked a stroke.

LaRita Jacobs of Seminole, Fla., who gets insurance through her husband’s job and has an annual family income of $70,000, says $7,500 a year in out-ofpocket costs kept her from dealing with an arthritis-related neck problem until it got so bad she couldn’t lift a fork. She finally got treatment in October, but she’s putting off shoulder surgery, opting for less expensive physical therapy and planning to “tough out the pain.”

“How did we get to this crazy life?” asks Jacobs, 54. “We’re struggling to pay our bills like we were struggling when we first got started.”

Why is this happening? Health care researchers point to a convergence of trends building for years: the steep rise in deductibles even as premiums stabilize, corporate belt-tightening and stagnant middle-class wages.

“It’s a case of companies trying to offer workers health insurance and still generate profit,” said Eric Wright, a professor of sociology and public health at Georgia State University. “But whenever costs go up for the consumers … it promotes a delay in care.”

Many doctors contend it’s only a matter of time before the middle class begins crowding ERs. They say putting off care can be dangerous, exponentially more costly and, if it continues, can threaten the nation’s health.

MONITORING THE TREND

Praveen’s father, Mohana Arla, says being forced to pay so much out-of-pocket “is as good as not having insurance” in an era of ever-rising health care costs. Out-of-pocket maximums can easily exceed $10,000 a year for families, and median household income is about $53,000.

“Health expenses tend to come up unexpectedly, or if you have a chronic condition, they come up relentlessly,” says Karen Pollitz, a senior fellow at Kaiser. “People put off care or they split their pills. They do without.”

Research backs that up:

·        Nearly 30% of privately insured, working-age Americans with deductibles of at least 5% of their income had a medical problem but didn’t go to the doctor, a 2014 survey by the Commonwealth Fund found. About the same percentage skipped medical tests, treatments or follow-ups. 

·        Nearly half of middle-class workers skipped health care services or fell into financial hardship because of health expenses, according to a survey by the Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. 

·        Use of hospital care among insured workers has been dropping since 2010, and use of outpatient care, such as doctor visits, dropped slightly for the first time from 2012 to 2013, according to the Health Care Cost Institute.

Medical professionals see the reality behind the research. The Arlas’ patient load used to be 45% commercially insured and 25% Medicaid; now that’s reversed. Stan Brock, founder of Remote Area Medical, which runs free clinics around the nation, says the group’s volunteer workers found that about 7% of patients who came to one of the clinics had job-provided insurance.

Patients often do a sort of medical and financial triage when they get sick. Jacobs says every time a doctor suggests a new test or medication for her arthritis, she asks herself, “Is it critical? You’re always playing the odds.”

Though all out-of-pocket expenses play a role in such decisions, experts say the driving factor is the deductible, which averages $2,000 or more for single coverage for nearly one in five workers and from $2,000 to $4,500 for families.

What stage is the Decline of U.S. Democracy in?

What stage is the Decline of U.S. Democracy in?

In 1887 Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh , had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior: "A democracy is always Temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent Form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until The time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous Gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority Always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from The public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally Collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a Dictatorship." "The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the Beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 Years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to complacency; From complacency to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage." The Obituary follows: "United States of America",  Born 1776, Died 2016 It doesn't hurt to read this several times. Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning The last Presidential election: Number of States won by:         Obama: 19               Romney: 29 Square miles of land won by:    Obama: 580,000      Romney: 2,427,000 Population of counties won by: Obama: 127 million  Romney: 143 million Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by:                                              Obama: 13.2             Romney: 2.1 Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Romney won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of the country. Obama territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in low Income tenements and living off various forms of government Welfare..." Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of Democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population Already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.. If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million Criminal invaders called illegal’s - and they vote - then we can say Goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years.

Politics in permanent state of Armageddon Excerpts from E.J. Dionne article with comments

Politics in permanent state of Armageddon

Excerpts from E.J. Dionne article with comments

We now seem to be living in the Age of High C, a period when every fight is Armageddon, every foe is a monster, and every issue is either the key to national survival or the doorway to ruin. [ high C is a euphemism for screechy editorials]

This habit seems especially pronounced in the way President Barack Obama’s adversaries treat him. It’s odd that so many continue to see Obama as a radical and a socialist even as the Dow hits record levels and the wealthy continue to do very nicely. If he is a socialist, he is surely the most incompetent practitioner in the history of Marxism.

[Obama's behavior is demonstrative of his ideology.  His failures are demonstrative this remains a conservative nation.]

The reaction to Obama is part of a larger difficulty that involves pretending we are philosophically far more divided than we are. In all of the well-off democracies, even people who actually call themselves socialists no longer claim to have an alternative to the market as the primary creator and distributor of goods and services. The boundaries on the left end of what’s permissible in the public debate have been pushed well toward the center. This makes the hysteria and hyperbole all the more incomprehensible.

[Simply not true. The left has moved further left and that creates an equal reaction from conservatives.]

But let’s dream a little and assume that the American left signed on to the proposals put forward by Lane Kenworthy of the University of California- San Diego in his challenging (and, by the way, very pro-market) book “Social Democratic America,” published this year. Kenworthy’s argument is that we can “successfully embrace both flexibility and security, both competition and social justice.”

[History has proven that giving our government more power in the areas named by Kenworthy has put us on the road to fiscal insolvency. Social programs are consuming over 60% of our spending]

His wish list is a straightforward set of progressive initiatives. A few of them: universal health insurance and early education, extensive new help on job searches and training, a year of paid parental leave, an increased minimum wage indexed to prices, expansions of efforts that supplement wages such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, and the government as an employer of last resort.

[Substitute the word Socialism for Progressive.  This is still a massive transfer of wealth in our economy. One the Kenworthy nor Dionne can explain away]

His program, he says, would cost around 10 percent of our GDP. Now that’s a lot of money and the debate about whether we should spend it would be anything but phony. Yet would such a level of expenditure signal the death of our constitutional system? Would it make us like, say, Cuba? No, and no. It might make us a little more like Germany, the Netherlands or the Scandinavian countries. These market democracies happen to share with us an affection for freedom and enterprise. And when it comes to High C, there’s nothing quite like our culture wars in which disagreements about social issues are seen as battles between libertines and bigots. When I look around, I see a lot of liberals who live quite traditional family lives and even go regularly to churches, synagogues and mosques. I see a lot of conservatives who are feminists when it comes to their daughters’ opportunities and oppose bigotry against gays and lesbians.

[Another liberal seeing the world he wants to see, rather than the world as it is.  Liberals are not Conservatives and visa versa. Period!]

The ideological resolution I’d suggest for the new year is that all sides stop fighting and pool their energies to easing the marriage and family crisis that is engulfing working-class Americans. This would require liberals to acknowledge what the vast majority of them already practice in their own lives: that, all things being equal, kids are better off with two loving and engaged parents. It would require conservatives to acknowledge that many of the pressures on families are economic and that the decline of well-paying blue-collar work is causing huge disruptions in family formation. I’d make a case that Kenworthy’s ideas for a more social democratic America would be good for families, but let’s argue it out in the spirit of a shared quest for remedies.

[Do you recognize the disguised Keynesian Economics? The liberal Democrats created the issues Dionne complains about and now he advocates tired old liberal strategies to deal with them: More and bigger government with even higher taxes!]

Maybe it’s asking too much, but might social conservatives also consider my friend Jonathan Rauch’s idea that they abandon their campaign against gay marriage in favor of a new campaign on the value of committed relationships for all of us?

[Notice how he slips this non sequitur in? Disregard this and don't let it distract you]

Disagreement is one of the joys of freedom, so I am all for boisterous debate and tough political and philosophical competition. It’s how I make my living. But our democratic system would be healthier if it followed the Greenfield rule and reserved the harshest invective for things that are genuinely monstrous.

[So the world that Dionne lives in would have conservatives agree with liberal socialism in the U.S. as long as it is not an "in your face" move away from capitalism.  Oh! notice he never talked about that.]

Diagnosing Cuba Derangement Syndrome

Diagnosing Cuba Derangement Syndrome

By George Will

Barack Obama has made a geopolitical irrelevancy suddenly relevant to American presidential politics. For decades, Cuba has been instructive as a museum of two stark failures: socialism and the U.S. embargo. Now, Cuba has become useful as a clarifier of different Republican flavors of foreignpolicy thinking.

The permanent embargo was imposed in 1962 in the hope of achieving, among other things, regime change. Well.

Fidel Castro, 88, has not been seen in public since January and may be even more mentally diminished than anyone – including his 83-year-old brother – who still adheres to Marxism. Whatever Fidel's condition, however, Cuba has been governed by the Castros during 11 U.S. presidencies, and for more years than the Soviet Union dominated Eastern Europe. Regime change – even significant regime modification – has not happened in Havana. Some conservative criticisms of Obama's new Cuba policy – which includes normalizing diplomatic and commercial relations, to the extent that presidential action can – seem reflexive. They look symptomatic of Cold War Nostalgia and 1930s Envy – yearnings for the moral clarity of the struggle with the totalitarians. Cuba's regime, although totalitarian, no longer matters in international politics. As bankrupt morally as it is economically, the regime is intellectually preposterous and an enticing model only for people who want to live where there are lots of 1950s Chevrolets.

Eleven million Cubans, however, matter. Obama's new policy is defensible if it will improve their political conditions by insinuating into Cuba economic and cultural forces that will be subversive of tyranny.

Sen. Rand Paul, a potential Republican presidential candidate, evidently considers this hope highly probable. He is correct to support giving it a try. But he may not understand how many times such wishes have fathered the thought that commerce can pacify the world. In 1910, 40 peaceful European years after the Franco-Prussian War, Norman Angell's book 'The Great Illusion' became an international bestseller by arguing that war between developed industrial countries would be prohibitively expensive, hence futile, hence unlikely. Soon Europe stumbled into what was, essentially, a 30-year war.

Angell's theory was an early version of what foreign-policy analyst James Mann calls 'the Starbucks fallacy,' the theory that when people become accustomed to a plurality of coffee choices, they will successfully demand political pluralism. We are sadder but wiser now that this theory has been wounded, if not slain, by facts, two of which are China and Vietnam. Both combine relatively open economic systems with political systems that remain resolutely closed.

Sen. Marco Rubio, a potential 2016 rival of Paul's, is properly disgusted that Obama, in striking his deal with Cuba, accomplished disgracefully little for the country’s breathtakingly brave democracy advocates. There are two reasons for questioning whether Obama really tried. First, he is generally congruent with, and partly a product of, academic leftism. Hence, he might be tinged with the sentimentalism that has made Cuba a destination for political pilgrims too ideologically blinkered to see the extraordinary sadism of Cuba's treatment of its many political prisoners. Second, Obama is so phobic about George W. Bush's miscarried 'regime change' in Iraq, that he cannot embrace, or at least enunciate, a regime change policy toward Cuba. Regime change, however, must be, at bottom, the justification for his new approach.

Cuba Derangement Syndrome (CDS), a recurring fever, accounted for the Bay of Pigs calamity, the most feckless use of U.S. power ever. After this, the Kennedys, President John and Attorney General Robert, continued to encourage harebrained attempts to destabilize Cuba and assassinate its leader.

Today, CDS afflicts those who, like Rubio, charge that U.S. diplomatic relations and economic interactions 'lead to legitimizing' Cuba's regime. America's doctrine about legitimacy has been clear since the Declaration of Independence: Governments derive their 'just powers' from the consent of the governed. America has diplomatic and commercial relations with many regimes that are realities even though they flunk our legitimacy test. Twenty-three years after Cuba ceased being a Soviet satellite, there is no compelling, or even coherent, argument for why Cuba, among all the world's repulsive regimes, should be the object of a U.S. policy whose rationale is to express the obvious – U.S. distaste.

What makes Rubio uncharacteristically shrill, saying Paul has 'no idea what he's talking about'? And what makes Paul too clever by half when saying Rubio wants to 'retreat to our borders' and hence is an 'isolationist'? CDS does this. As they brawl about Cuba, a geopolitical irrelevancy, neither seems presidential. 

The pathology seen in many black communities is entirely new in black history.

Black progression is being undercut by retrogression

By Walter E. Williams

There is no question, though it's not acknowledged enough, that black Americans have made greater gains, over some of the highest hurdles and in a very short span of time, than any other racial group in mankind's history. What's the evidence? If black Americans were thought of as a nation with their own gross domestic product, they'd rank among the 20 wealthiest nations. It was a black American, Gen. Colin Powell, who headed the mightiest military in mankind's history. A few black Americans are among the world's wealthiest. Many black Americans are among the world's most famous personalities.

The significance of all this is that in 1865, neither an ex-slave nor an ex-slave owner would have believed that such progress would be possible in less than a century and a half. As such, it speaks to the intestinal fortitude of a people. Just as importantly, it speaks to the greatness of a nation within which such progress was possible. That progress would have been impossible anywhere except in the United States of America. The challenge that lies before us is how those gains can be extended to a large percentage of black people for whom they appear elusive.

A good start to meeting that challenge is to recognize that much of the pathology seen in many black communities is entirely new in black history.

 Let's look at some of that history. In the late 1800s, depending on the city, 70 to 80 percent of black households were two-parent. In 1925 New York City, 85 percent of black households were two-parent. As late as 1950, only 18 percent of black households were singleparent. From 1890 to 1940, a slightly higher percentage of black adults had married than white adults. In 1940, black illegitimacy was about 14 percent.

Today it's an entirely different story. Black illegitimacy is 75 percent. Close to 50 percent of marriage-age blacks never marry. Close to 70 percent of black households are female-headed. If one thinks family structure doesn't matter, consider that the poverty rate among black female-headed families is about 47 percent but among married families it has been in the single digits for more than two decades. It's not just poverty. Children raised by single parents are likelier to be physically abused; use drugs; engage in violent, delinquent and criminal behavior; have emotional and behavioral problems; and drop out of school.

What about employment? Every census from 1890 to 1950 showed that black labor force participation rates were higher than those of whites. Today it's a mere fraction. Prior to the mid-'50s, the unemployment rate for black 16- and 17-year-olds was under 10 percent and less than that of whites. Who would argue that this more favorable employment picture was because there was less racial discrimination in the job market in earlier times? Labor laws such as the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 – a federal minimum wage law for construction workers – and the 1938 federal minimum wage law for all workers reduced work opportunities for blacks.

Then there's the high crime rate. Each year, roughly 7,000 blacks are murdered. Ninety-four percent of the time, the murderer is another black person. Though blacks are 13 percent of the nation's population, they are more than 50 percent of homicide victims. Nationally, the black homicide victimization rate is six times that of whites, and in some cities, it's 22 times that of whites. Along with being most of the nation's homicide victims, blacks are most of the victims of violent personal crimes, such as assault and robbery.

Older black people, who were raised in an era when there was far greater discrimination and who faced far fewer opportunities, need to speak out against behavior and excuses that their parents would have never accepted. Otherwise, the race hustlers, poverty pimps and white liberals will continue with the narrative that black problems are a result of racism and racist cops and condemn future generations of blacks to a lifetime of mediocrity. 

Black Lives Matter?

Black Lives Matter?

Maybe not to Blacks

"I find it very disappointing that you're not discussing the fact that 93 percent of blacks in America are killed by other blacks," Giuliani said in an appearance on television. His point was that the death of a black teenager at the hands of a white cop was "the exception," and if the country is concerned about black homicides, then it would do better to focus on African Americans.  That is 9,000 African-Americans killed each year.

Any candid debate on race and criminality in the United States must begin with the fact that blacks are responsible for an astoundingly disproportionate number of crimes, which has been the case for at least the past half a century.  Today blacks are about 13 percent of the population and continue to be responsible for an inordinate amount of crime; blacks commit more than half of all murders in the United States. The black arrest rate for most offenses — including robbery, aggravated assault and property crimes — is still typically two to three times their representation in the population. Blacks as a group are also overrepresented among persons arrested for so-called white-collar crimes such as counterfeiting, fraud and embezzlement.

Blaming decades-long, well-documented trend on racist cops, prosecutors, judges, sentencing guidelines and drug laws doesn’t cut it as a plausible explanation.

What is happening to the black culture?

Of the 27 industrialized countries studied by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the U.S. had 25.8 percent of children being raised by a single parent, compared with an average of 14.9 percent across the other countries.

In the African American community, 72 percent of Black children are raised in a single parent household. What is happening to these children? Turning to crime? Joining gangs? Blaming others on the plight of their lives?