Baltimore Is Not About Race

The Wall Street Journal ^ | May 4, 2015 | William McGurn

[KeyLargo]

Baltimore Is Not About Race

Government-induced dependency is the problem—and it’s one with a long history.

By William McGurn

May 4, 2015

For those who see the rioting in Baltimore as primarily about race, two broad reactions dominate.

One group sees rampaging young men fouling their own neighborhoods and concludes nothing can be done because the social pathologies are so overwhelming. In some cities, this view manifests itself in the unspoken but cynical policing that effectively cedes whole neighborhoods to the thugs. Opinion Journal Video Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Jason Riley on what prompted the violence and what comes next. Photo credit: Getty Images.

The other group tut-tuts about root causes. Take your pick: inequality, poverty, injustice. Or, as President Obama intimated in an ugly aside on the rioting, a Republican Congress that will never agree to the “massive investments” (in other words, billions more in federal spending) required “if we are serious about solving this problem.”

There is another view. In this view, the disaster of inner cities isn’t primarily about race at all. It’s about the consequences of 50 years of progressive misrule—which on race has proved an equal-opportunity failure.

[KeyLargo]

Excellent opinion piece by Bill McGurn.

He explains that it makes no difference about the race of the victims of Democrat Progressives policies. The outcome is always the same.

"If our inner-city African-American communities suffer disproportionately from crippling social pathologies that make upward mobility difficult—and they do—it is in large part because they have disproportionately been on the receiving end of this five-decade-long progressive experiment in government beneficence.

How do we know? Because when we look at a slice of white America that was showered with the same Great Society good intentions—Appalachia—we find the same dysfunctions: greater dependency, more single-parent families and the absence of the good, private-sector jobs that only a growing economy can create."

[Trapped Behind Enemy Lines]

I agree it can’t be exclusively about race in a city like Baltimore where blacks run just about everything.

The agenda seems to be more radical and ideological, violent and revolutionary with a strong desire to bring down institutions such as local police departments.

It is a demand for reparations, and quite frankly totalitarian government run by radical left socialists and Marxists with some radical Islam in the mix.

[KeyLargo]

Vast Stretches Of Impoverished Appalachia Look Like They Have Been Through A War

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/18/2014

Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,

If you want to get an idea of where the rest of America is heading, just take a trip through the western half of West Virginia and the eastern half of Kentucky some time. Once you leave the main highways, you will rapidly encounter poverty on a level that is absolutely staggering. Overall, about 15 percent of the entire nation is under the poverty line, but in some areas of eastern Kentucky, more than 40 percent of the population is living in poverty. Most of the people would work if they could. Over the past couple of decades, locals have witnessed businesses and industries leave the region at a steady pace. When another factory or business shuts down, many of the unemployed do not even realize that their jobs have been shipped overseas. Coal mining still produces jobs that pay a decent wage, but Barack Obama is doing his very best to kill off that entire industry. After decades of decline, vast stretches of impoverished Appalachia look like they have been through a war. Those living in the area know that things are not good, but they just try to do the best that they can with what they have.

In previous articles about areas of the country that are economically depressed, I have typically focused on large cities such as Detroit or Camden, New Jersey. But the economic suffering that is taking place in rural communities in the heartland of America is just as tragic. We just don’t hear about it as much.

Most of those that live in the heart of Appalachia are really good “salt of the earth” people that just want to work hard and do what is right for their families. But after decades of increasing poverty, the entire region has been transformed into an economic nightmare that never seems to end. The following is a description of what life is like in Appalachia today that comes from a recent article by Kevin D. Williamson...

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-01-18/vast-stretches-impoverished-appalachia-look-they-have-been-through-war

“Once again, our politicians are betraying the American people and millions of jobs will be lost as a result.”

Tyler Durden is correct, that politicians of both parties are responsible for what has become of America today. But Democrats have perfected the destruction into an art.

[SkyPilot]

It works like this: Once a month, the debit-card accounts of those receiving what we still call food stamps are credited with a few hundred dollars — about $500 for a family of four, on average — which are immediately converted into a unit of exchange, in this case cases of soda. On the day when accounts are credited, local establishments accepting EBT cards — and all across the Big White Ghetto, “We Accept Food Stamps” is the new E pluribus unum – are swamped with locals using their public benefits to buy cases and cases — reports put the number at 30 to 40 cases for some buyers — of soda. Those cases of soda then either go on to another retailer, who buys them at 50 cents on the dollar, in effect laundering those $500 in monthly benefits into $250 in cash — a considerably worse rate than your typical organized-crime money launderer offers — or else they go into the local black-market economy, where they can be used as currency in such ventures as the dealing of unauthorized prescription painkillers — by “pillbillies,” as they are known at the sympathetic establishments in Florida that do so much business with Kentucky and West Virginia that the relevant interstate bus service is nicknamed the “OxyContin Express.” A woman who is intimately familiar with the local drug economy suggests that the exchange rate between sexual favors and cases of pop — some dealers will accept either — is about 1:1, meaning that the value of a woman in the local prescription-drug economy is about $12.99 at Walmart prices.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Common Sense

SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.

Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others. - Thomas Paine

My experience is that “liberals” are entirely unable (/unwilling) to define a distinction between “society” and “government.” Turns out that Thomas Paine put paid to that attitude all the way back in 1776.

This article is about LBJ’s proclaimed “Great Society,” which, as Paine makes clear, is an absurd thing for a politician to claim to be able to make.

In 1984 Charles Murray documented the economic results in his famous book:

Losing Ground:

American Social Policy, 1950-1980

[Voltage]

With respect to good paying manufacturing jobs, these have been eliminated by

Lawyers, Unions, Taxes and Regulations

The first two, both enabled by government, are enriching themselves exactly as one would expect. Taxes and Regulations enfeeble businesses leading to job loss and often closure.

Recognizing the cause is the first step to fixing the problem...with luck, perhaps in 50 years.

[HotHunt]

You seem to get it. I get it. This is all about Obama, the White House Marxist, wanting to nationalize the local and state law enforcement agencies. This has been his goal for sometime.

Why do you think that only a few selected, cherry-picked incidents between the police and the "poor, innocent, black choir boys" are highlighted for Obama, the Department of Just Us and Al Charlatan to use as examples of how bad the white oppressive cops are in this country? Because it fits their narrative.

Baltimore was perfect because it is almost all democRATS and black. They are all in on the gig. This Freddie Gray case is just like Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Garner, in that it fits their narrative. There has been quite a few blacks killed in Baltimore since Freddie Gray was arrested but you won't hear about them. Why? Because they were shot by other blacks and not police officers.

This is just Obama following his Rules for Radicals and his community disorganizing background to create chaos in the country to justify federalizing the police. Al Charlatan even admitted as much when he said he was going to lead a march in DC to the DOJ to "demand" that they take over the local police agencies. He's just doing Obama's bidding.

[Trapped Behind Enemy Lines]

I would agree with everything you wrote.

These folks (Barry Soetoro & Co) are beyond reprehensible and never allow a crisis to go to waste.