The Battered Wife Syndrome of the Black Voter

“A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.” — Friedrich August von Hayek

Black voters remain defiantly loyal to Obama, despite suffering from his mishandling of the economy and Maxine Waters' complaints about his focus on wooing white independent voters for his reelection. But of course, Democrats have long taken blacks for granted. This loyalty in the face of bad treatment is reminiscent of battered wife syndrome (BWS).

Unfortunately, the vast majority of black voters have been bitch-slapped so for so long by the Democratic Party that many seem to be afflicted with the battered voter syndrome (BVS).

Psychologists tell us that BWS is a physical and psychological condition characterized by violence and learned helplessness in women who are repeatedly abused by their husbands. BWS is used to explain why abused women do not seek assistance from others, nor fight their abusers, nor leave the abusive situation. Victims believe that the abuse is not the fault of the abuser; rather, the abuse originates from sources not related to the abuser. They often become aggressive or abusive to others who attempt to offer assistance. Victims will repeatedly seek out their very abuser for comfort after each incident of abuse. This is the height of cognitive dissonance.

Similarly, the relationship between black voters and the Democratic Party displays many of the clinically diagnosed pathologies found in BWS: decimating abuse of the black family perpetrated by 40 years of Democratic Party welfare legislation; learned helplessness, making it nearly impossible to fight the abuse or escape the abuser; profound belief that the source of the abuse originates from sources other than the Democratic Party; aggressive and abusive treatment of others — the so-called "Uncle Toms" and white racists — who attempt to offer assistance; habitually seeking out the Democratic Party for succor from the very abuse perpetrated by the Democratic Party.

As the battered wife is fiercely loyal to her abusive husband, so are black voters fiercely loyal to the Democratic Party and to Barack Obama, the "African-American" leader of the Democratic Party. Is there any wonder that Maxine Waters could rant with impunity before an approving audience of job-seeking supplicants? "As far as I'm concerned — the Tea Party can go straight to hell." The California congresswoman knew her demagoguery would be favorably received by helpless victims of the battered voter syndrome.

Yet Rep Waters has done nothing for the Black community she represents, but has done a great deal for herself and her husband.

Maxine Waters has held dominion over the black people of Watts, CA for over twenty years, and Watts is worse now than it was when she began representing them. This is despite Waters' and others in the Congressional Black Caucus' $17 trillion dollar War on Poverty dating back to the Great Society — the time when black pimps voted for the racist Democratic president LBJ, who said to "give them [uppity Negroes] just enough to get by, but not enough to make a difference."

Telling the Tea Party to "go to hell" was the easy applause line for Waters. It gave her relief, approval. She returned to her mansion, and her constituents remain high from their hit of the political crack of hatred.

In a recent meeting in Miami, Waters grilled an Obama sycophant, Don Graves, Executive Director of the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, who had been dispatched by Obama to quiet the natives.

“Graves said to a group of black church-goers that "certain communities have been hit harder than other communities."

"Let me hear you say 'black,'" said Waters the queen of poverty pimps, as the crowd erupted in cheers.

Waters treated Graves like he was the president. I give Graves credit for having the guts that Obama doesn't have.

At one point, Graves commented, "You all don't need to go through me to get to the president."

Graves later added, "You may not feel like the president is listening to you, but he hears you loud and clear."

Waters, who last week in Detroit blasted the half-White House for not having a jobs strategy in the black community, did not seem satisfied and commented:

“I'm 72 years old I've been elected by the people, served in the legislature, now in the Congress, and if I'm reduced to having you take my message to the president, I should go home.”

Waters ain't going anywhere. Why would she live under the laws of everybody else, instead of those special laws that Congress gets. Negro, please! Waters knows the perks.

Waters is the woman who "arranged a meeting" between the bank and a federal regulator where, ultimately, millions of dollars in funds went to the bank where Waters' husband remains a stockholder and is a former director. Coincidence, she claims.

While most blacks in Waters' district can't qualify for a loan from an EZ Loan center, Waters is stealing money from taxpayers and giving it to her husband. The sad part is that at $12 million, Waters got a fraction of what white Democrats stole in the financial windfall known as TARP.

Waters has been listed as one of the most corrupt members of Congress three years (2005, 2006, and 2009) by Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington (CREW), and rightfully so. And Maxine knows she's in trouble. She must make the natives restless in order to keep the focus off her, and it stinks that there is no viable white Republican around. Thank God for the Tea Party!

It's that wretched Tea Party that is wrecking Obama's plan to provide all black people 40 acres and a Lexus for doing absolutely nothing. It is the job of the crooks that make up the Congressional Black Caucus to continually promise something and deliver nothing.

Where has the $17 trillion from the War on Poverty gone? Why don't all black people have a Lexus or BMW and a record label by now? Because a few black overseers get to live large.

Maxine Waters loves the high life. She has assured it for her children, who have benefited from her unscrupulous practices. Jesse Jackson, Sr. did it for his son. Carolyn Kilpatrick tried to do it for her son Kwame, but he was the stupid one and blew it. Charlie Wrangle was convicted of ethics violations for tax evasions, but still retains his House seat.

Waters should fear the Tea Party. It is the one group that has the possibility of emptying the piggy bank for low-class thieves like her and other members of the CBC. The Tea Party is not preventing businesses from coming to black neighborhoods. The Tea Party is not withholding TARP funds from businesses. The Tea Party is not responsible for uneducated black kids. The Tea Party is not responsible for the high rate of teenage pregnancy among blacks. The Tea Party is not foreclosing on black homeowners. The Tea Party is not putting black people in prison. The Tea Party is not responsible for unemployment in the black community. The Tea Party is not shipping drugs into black neighborhoods. The Tea Party is not allowing illegal immigrants to steal jobs and critical services from blacks.

A few days ago Bill O’Reilly went off on the failed policies of the “Great Society” to end poverty. According to his rant Blacks have fared far less than the rest of society even with all of the government spending.

The black crooked elite couldn't care less about the blacks they serve up, but they will take care of their own.

No amount of demagoguery, however, can deny that liberalism has had disastrous consequences for black America. For example, take the Davis-Bacon Act, which mandates that "prevailing wages" be paid on all federally financed or assisted construction projects. This racist legislation has been on the books since 1931. It is a pro-union law that had the original intent of driving black workers out of the construction and building trades industries. During the 1931 congressional debate, Rep. Clayton Allgood, D-Ala., stated: "Reference has been made to a contractor from Alabama who went to New York with bootleg labor. This is a fact. That contractor has cheap colored labor that he transports, and he puts them in cabins, and it is labor of that sort that is in competition with white labor throughout the country." In 2011, Davis-Bacon still serves the purpose of discriminating against non-union black construction contractors and black construction workers because it prevents rural and inner-city laborers and contractors from working on federally financed construction projects in their own communities.

Periodically, Davis-Bacon comes up for repeal by Congress because of its racist intent. Incredibly, the Congressional Black Caucus typically stands at the forefront of defending the indefensible! In a letter to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce dated April 13, 2011, the Congressional Black Caucus, as a co-signer of the letter, outrageously attempted to revise the racist history of Davis-Bacon in the following:

“Prior to the enactment of Davis-Bacon in 1931, there were many shocking examples of abusive practices and wholesale exploitation of female and minority workers on construction sites. For the last 80 years, the Davis-Bacon Act has protected the wages of all construction workers, including minorities and women, who are particularly vulnerable to exploitation.

We believe that Davis-Bacon has been instrumental in bridging the wage gap for historically disadvantaged sectors of our society. In the face of decaying social and economic opportunities, this measure provides women and minorities with an important tool to achieving greater parity with their mainstream counterparts. The direct and indirect positive effects of Davis-Bacon prevailing wage regulations make them a prudent and beneficial policy. Additionally, Davis-Bacon prevailing wage have no adverse economic impact.”

When I was in business running a civil engineering and land surveying firm we were constantly plagued by the Davis-Bacon Act. When we worked on public sector contracts we had to prove we were paying prevailing wage. As our field crews were members of the Operating Engineers Union this was no problem for us as the union wage represented or was above prevailing wage. This, was however, a problem for people, especially young people who wanted to obtain entry level positions. Due to our union contract we were not allowed to use non-union interns on our field crews unless they would join the union or were accompanied by a union employee all day. Obviously the client would not pay for double employees so we did not hire these wanabe engineers or surveyors. As for joining the union it was near impossible for these youngsters. If you checked the union roosters you could count the number of black apprentices on one hand. While Davis-Bacon is good for those inside the system it severely prevents inner city Blacks from entering the system.

Davis-Bacon should have long ago died a rightly deserved ignoble death, along with rest of the Jim Crow-era anti-black legislation. Rather, Barack Hussein Obama, with the enthusiastic participation of the Congressional Black Caucus, not only rejuvenated this abomination to its original racist vigor, but he and they put Davis-Bacon on steroids. According to an All-Agency Memorandum issued by the Department of Labor, Davis-Bacon now applies to all "projects funded directly by or assisted in whole or in part by and through the Federal Government." In other words, this malignancy is metastasized. Projects that are only partially funded by ARRA must now obey the racist mandates of Davis-Bacon.

Equally disgusting as Davis-Bacon in Obama bitch-slapping black voters to curry favor with the unions is the Project Labor Agreement (PLA). A PLA requires all contractors, unionized or not, to subject themselves and their employees to unionization in order to work on a government-funded construction project. In order to receive a federal contract, a contractor must sign the agreement and subject its employees to union control. Obama signed this job-killing executive order on February 6, 2009, less than 3 weeks after assuming the office of president ostensibly to "promote economy and efficiency in Federal procurement"

It's not surprising that Harry Alford, CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce, would denounce PLAs with his statement: “Show me a PLA and I will show you Jim Crow employment plus a locking out of most Black-owned firms that happen to be nonunion most of the time. A Project Labor Agreement is a license to discriminate against Black workers.”

As an aside to this post what right does government have to tell someone they have to join a union to work. For the contractor, like my firm was it was no problem, we simply used union employees and passed the increased cost on to the client. For the worker it amounts to tyranny. If a worker wants to sell his property (his labor) to another it should not be government’s business to step in and force him to join a union that will restrict his opportunities. If person A wants to sell his labor to person B at an agreed upon price why should person C enter the negotiations and tell person A that he must sell his labor on person C’s terms and then give a portion of his compensation to person C. This sounds more like fascism than liberty.

The proof of Obama and the Democrats bitch-slapping black voters is in the pudding. According to CNN, 96 percent of blacks voted for Obama in 2008. However, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, of the total 9.1 million construction workers in 2010, only 491,000 (5.3 percent) were black. Construction and building trades unions are loath to reveal the racial composition of their membership, but it's easy to surmise that finding a black union construction worker is only slightly less challenging than finding a chicken with lips or one of Paul Krugman’s aliens. The BLS informs us that only 13.1 percent of all construction workers belonged to unions in 2010. Being generous by using the same percentage against the 491,000 black construction workers, you arrive at a highly unlikely 64,000 total black union construction workers in all of the United States of America. Even this figure does not withstand anecdotal credibility, as evidenced by anybody driving through a federally financed construction zone on our nation's streets and highways and taking a head count of the number of non-white workers. Black contractors don't fare any better than black construction workers. According to Harry Alford of the NBCC, only 1.4 percent of federally funded highway construction contracts go to black contractors. Of those 1.4 percent no doubt 90 to 100 percent are to sub-contractors fulfilling their minority participation requirements.

The minority participation program is another scam created by the Democrat Party. Providing civil engineering and land surveying on government contracts for 25 years I saw this scam perpetrated over and over again. Here’s how it worked. A major engineering or construction firm wants a contract for a large public works project. The contract requires a percentage of minority participation, usually an aggregate of minority-owned, women-owned and veteran-owned up to 20 or 30 percent. The big firm is only concerned with the expertise and experience of the sub-contractors, not the color of the worker’s skin.

So a Black, Hispanic, or Women goes into business with a white experienced partner with the minority or woman owning 51% of the business. They then hire a bunch of experienced and qualified white folks with good resumes so that can get the contract. Everyone benefits except the minority workers in he community. The agency issuing the contract gets a gold star for meeting the minority goal and the politicians are happy. They can crow to their constituents how wonderful they were in bringing jobs to the inner city. The big firm gets a gold star and a good experience record for meeting the minority goals set forth in the contract as these goals are monetary, not an employee head count. The minority owned business gets the contract and makes a profit, and bunch of experienced white guys have a good paying job. The only ones left out in the cold are the people this political and stupid policy are supposed to help.

Given the Obama and Democratic Party's racist exclusion of blacks from the construction industry, is there any question why black unemployment is currently at the "official rate" of 16.2 percent with real unemployment above 30 percent? One needs look no further than the masochistic devotion of black voters to being bitch-slapped by Obama and the Democratic Party.

The Tea Party is three years old, Maxine — you've been serving for over twenty. Many of the CBC have been serving even longer. I say you and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus need to look in that mirror for the people to blame. You will know that mirror when you see it, because it says: Objects in mirror are dumber than they appear.

Maxine and her CBC pals, along with their fellow travelers in the Congress and the liberal press have been touting these failed policies for years, policies that have hurt the Black community more than they have helped. If Maxine and her minions want to do something for their Black constituents they should tell them the truth, remove the entitlements, and preach personal responsibility. Liberty is the solution, not more statist tyranny that will insure the longevity of the plantations they oversee.