Posted on 05/04/2015 4:01:38 AM PDT by lifeofgrace
Nothing sharpens the focus on the Unbridgeable Crevice separating th*g (the word “thug” is now banned) apologists on the far left from those of us who use words because they mean something than Baltimore’s self-immolation.
It’s really a tale of two cities, depending on who’s telling the tale.
The borderline-Jacobins at Slate, who believe spanking is child abuse, and personal responsibility is out of fashion, try to explain looting away as a social phenomenon: “Why would anyone burn down the only CVS in their neighborhood?”
The reason, I think, is likely the same reason that poor black Americans in cities across the country burned “their own” neighborhoods in the late 1960s: They did not experience those places as their own. Then, like now, police brutality was a precipitating cause of the violence, but it was the long-term experience of the indignities of the ghetto that gave shape to the riots. Then, like now, commentators compared the rioters to animals who had run wild and needed discipline. Rioting, to these bystanders, was not proper political protest but the criminal actions of poor people who merely wanted to grab what they could for free. This narrative, which I heard throughout my childhood growing up in Baltimore in the 1980s, put the blame not on the depredations of the ghetto, but on the character of its residents. It completely misapprehends the political economy of our poorest neighborhoods.In other words: they riot because society has ignored them. Not only is that a specious argument, but it also highlights the fact that Baltimore hasn’t had a Republican mayor since 1968. So which party is responsible for ignoring the downtrodden social class?
Told another way, Abraham Miller at National Review wrote:
Because riots in our time tend to occur in poor black neighborhoods, we associate characteristics of black poverty with riots. Yet, before the 1960s, most rioters were white, and when blacks were involved, they tended to be victims rather than participants.Both the left and right agree on the precipitating event, but the left holds onto the inevitability of riots, like natural disasters—a 100 year flood, a 20 year earthquake, a 10 year hurricane, and a 5 year riot. It just happens. So let it happen.Many 19th-century riots were the actions of white middle-class or stable white working-class populations. Yet, social scientists have not proposed that the demographic characteristics of being white or economically stable led people to riot. Every riot has a precipitating event, something that results in anger turning to aggression. The mysterious death of Freddie Gray, a young black man, who succumbed while in police custody, was such an event. The reaction to it had the potential to turn into a riot. But it did not in and of itself turn into a riot. Riots, like all forms of political and social violence, require mobilization, and mobilization requires leadership. Spontaneity is one of the great myths about social events.
The left blames unemployment, lack of transportation, and payday loan businesses for wanton destruction. Sure, having a ready supply of unemployed teens looking for trouble does tend to multiply the chances of hooliganism, but it doesn’t make the resulting riot inevitable.
On the 1600 block of North Avenue, where a police van held Freddie Gray on the night he was arrested, the storefront of payday lender Ace Cash Express advertises “PAY BILLS. CHECKS CASHED.” Last year, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau denounced Ace Express’ payday lending, which “used false threats, intimidation, and harassing calls to bully payday borrowers into a cycle of debt … drain[ing] millions of dollars from cash-strapped consumers who had few options to fight back.” The looters who broke into Ace this week might well have been there before, as customers. They might also have been customers at Cash USA, a pawn shop at 2105 West Pratt Street that went up in flames this week, and which, like Ace, advertises its check cashing services. When Baltimoreans looted and burned payday lenders, check-cashing operations, and pawn shops this week, it was not just a chance to get money, it was chance to get back some of their money.Louis Hyman, the writer, italicized their money, suggesting that payday loan companies have somehow stolen money from their patrons. First of all, 6 percent of all payday loans default—for every $10,000 the companies loan, two weeks at a time, of the company’s money, they lose $600. Plus, they have to pay their staff to complete all the paperwork for each loan, which costs, say $10 per loan. So for 50 loans of $200, it’s already cost the company $1,100, and they haven’t even received a penny. To just break even, they have to charge at least $32 per loan—yes that's 16% and they haven’t even made a profit yet.
But the looters are just avengers of social justice to the left, because “the poor” never use their EBT cards for drugs, or cigarettes, or booze, or strip clubs. So Baltimore’s leftist leaders just let them riot, loot and destroy other people’s property. Like that will stop the riots.
But we know what stops riots, Miller points out.
When it comes to riots in America, pundits bring out the Kerner Commission Report, citing its highly questionable material on root causes while always seeming to ignore those parts of the report that noted that the use of quick, decisive force ends riots.This brings us full circle, because the ineffective, corrupt and Democrat-run Baltimore Police Department is as unable to apply tactical and effective force to end a riot as the city’s mayor is able to order it. Both are complicit in the destruction, and six officers, who likely are asking “what did I do wrong?” because they did their jobs the same way every day, are being sacrificed on the altar of inevitability.This, obviously, brings us to the tactic enunciated by Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake: “It’s a very delicate balancing act, because while we try to make sure that [the rioters] were protected from the cars and other things that were going on, we also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that as well.” This, of course, was the same tactic used in Ferguson by Missouri governor Jay Nixon, which permitted rioters to destroy small businesses in downtown Ferguson without opposition.
Ending the cycle of poverty certainly will make rioting less likely, as Slate concludes: “ In the months ahead, we must remember that it will be not enough to stop police brutality—we need to provide better economic opportunities as well if we want to improve the lives of Baltimore’s poor.”
But bowing to the inevitability of riots, along with looting, murder, and destruction, does nothing but encourage th*gs to be thuggish. Miller concludes:
We now give those who wish to destroy space to do so, and we thus throw gasoline on the already incendiary nature of riots. It is not politically acceptable to use decisive force against young, black, male thugs. It is acceptable to let them burn poor families out of their homes, attack fire trucks, and throw bricks at police. Welcome to politically correct America, a society that will incinerate itself on the altar of political correctness.President Obama said “you didn’t build that,” to American entrepreneurs and industrialists. Baltimore’s incineration cries out to Obama and the leftist party of slavery, eugenics, and abortion: you built that.
(crossposted from RedState.com)
Economic opportunity alone will do nothing. Until the toxic culture that indoctrinates these people into the "poverty" mentality is eradicated, these people will keep acting like animals.
The way we should be politically responding to this and that includes conservative news commentary (what there is of it) and the talk show circut is by asking these two questions.
(1)If drug dealer Gray was killed as a result of a bad drug deal would we be hearing about him and would there be be rioting in the streets ?
(2) Of what benefit is it to the regime to allow these riots go on ? How about it diverts attention from their effort to legalize 11 million illegals who will be taking jobs away from poor blacks.
But they won’t be using particularly the 2nd question because the GOPES (government over the people slite statists) like the Bush’s, Boehner, Rove, McConnell, Graham, and that bunch want amnesty to happen.
Hey black thug Baltimorons!
Need that Rx you stole filled? Better get on a bus uptown! Same for that payday loan you need b/c you can’t understand what a budget is!
Not just now — but FOREVER! Those businesses are NOT coming back!
The formula:
1. Indulgence
2. Tolerance
3. Liberty
4. License
5. ANARCHY
“Economic opportunity alone will do nothing.”
Economic opportunity exists even in the blighted urban core. Immigrants from Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East find ways to start up businesses and make a living in the worst sections of urban areas. For some reason the urban black culture does not embrace the values of hard work, delayed gratification, thrift, self improvement (i.e. education) and personal responsibility.
The left seems united today in blaming the plight of urban blacks on white racism, even in cities which have been controlled by blacks or liberals for half a century. There is no discussion of the toxic urban culture. For once I would like to see one of the black Ivy League professors ranting about white privilege asked how a fourth generation “teen” be raised by an undereducated, unemployed mother with multiple children by different fathers who are at best peripherally present in the child’s life is going to obtain a real job. Particularly if he cannot verbally communicate well, has no writing or math skills, has no self discipline, has no work ethic, has no manners, and already has a chip on his shoulder? Not to mention all of the pressures from the culture to procreate (without any responsibility for the child), to engage in drug use, to ally with a violent gang.
Breaking the cycle will require more than throwing money at people who cannot manage it and who do not have the education or core values required to hold a regular job, much less the desire to work hard and sacrifice to improve themselves.
Unfortunately our GOP representatives will not challenge the “white privilege” mantra coming from the left. The drumbeat for reparations is getting louder. It is only a matter of time.
Good article on why no business will want to build in Baltimore.
My Baltimore Business Problem
What it’s like to operate a company 150 yards from the burned out liquor store—and why it’s hard to create jobs.
By Jay Steinmetz
May 3, 2015
Baltimore
The supply-chain management company I started in the late 1990s and lead today is in downtown Baltimore. On the night of the worst violence last month, there were more tempting targets than our cement, nondescript building, like the liquor store 150 yards away that was looted. Yet on any given day what takes place in this neighborhood is a slow-motion version of recent events. Graffiti, which anyone with experience in urban policing will affirm is the first sign of trouble, regularly appears on the exterior of our building. From there the range of crimes escalates to burglarizing cars in the parking lot, and breaking and entering our building.
City policies and procedures fail to help employers address these problems—and make them worse. When the building alarm goes off, the police charge us a fee. If the graffiti isn’t removed in a certain amount of time, we are fined. This penalize-first approach is of a piece with Baltimore’s legendary tax and regulatory burden. The real cost of these ill-conceived policies is to the community where we—and other local businesses in similar positions—might be able to hire more of those Baltimoreans who have lost hope of escaping poverty and government dependency.
Maryland still lags most states in its appeal to companies, according to well-documented business-climate comparisons put out by think tanks, financial-services firms, site-selection consultants and financial media. Baltimore fares even worse than other Maryland jurisdictions, having the highest individual income and property taxes at 3.2% and $2.25 for every $100 of assessed property value, respectively. New businesses organized as partnerships or limited-liability corporations are subject, unusually, to the local individual income tax, reducing startup activity.
The bottom line is that our modest 14,000-square-foot building is hit with $50,000 in annual property taxes. And when we refinanced our building loan in 2006, Maryland and Baltimore real-estate taxes drove up the cost of this routine financial transaction by $36,000.
State and city regulations overlap in a number of areas, most notably employment and hiring practices, where litigious employees can game the system and easily find an attorney to represent them in court. Building-permit requirements, sales-tax collection procedures for our multistate clients, workers’ compensation and unemployment trust-fund hearings add to the expensive distractions that impede hiring.
Read at:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/my-baltimore-business-problem-1430688970
That same area was devastated in 1968 riots, and much of it never recovered in 45 years. Now look at them. It will turn into a century of of despair in liberal utopia. But keep voting demokrat numbskulls...
In other words community organizing...
Compassion for people in need is destroyed when government creates a poverty entitlement. The nature of bureaucracy to sustain itself enlarges the service population. Lifestyle payments reinforce those lifestyles.
Removing the compassionate community (churches, service agencies) from direct responsibility for those in need dehumanizes the poor.
The manipulation of an underclass by government intrusion insures the perpetuation and expansion of poverty.
The madness of a permanent underclass will end when government stops nurturing poverty.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.