Would Obama’s Grandfather Look Like Delbert Belton

"A universal peace, it is to be feared, is in the catalogue of events, which will never exist but in the imaginations of visionary philosophers, or in the breasts of benevolent enthusiasts." — James Madison

I have been extremely upset at the abject cowardice and hypocrisy of Barack Obama for ignoring the senseless thrill killing of Australian exchange student Christopher Lane after suffering multiple rhetorical compound fractures in attempting to create racial animus over the justified killing of thuglet Trayvon Martin. (When questioned about this, the White House spokesjuvenile, Josh Earnest, gave his trademarked stunned mullet stare and said he wasn’t familiar with the case.)

This was even a more disturbing response considering this senseless killing had been all over the news for several days and even the Prime Minister of Australia had commented on Lane’s brutal murder by three black tugs in Oklahoma. If nothing else Obama owes Australia a few words of condolence. But, you see he can’t because the killers look like his would-be sons.

Obama had another chance to redeem himself — but again he has remained silent. While it is understandable that he would be unable to empathize with a young white man gunned down while minding his own business, another case has emerged that he could have commented on.

Last Wednesday night 88 year old Battle of Okinawa veteran, Delbert Belton, was sitting in front of the Fraternal Order of Eagles lodge in Spokane, WA. Around 8pm he was approached by two black teenagers, now identified as 16 year old Demetrius Glenn and 16 year old Kenan Adams Kinard, who proceeded to beat him to death.

As we have been told so many times, Barack Obama’s maternal grandfather, Stanley Dunham, was also an elderly white guy and World War II veteran. And he alleges in his multi-volume serial memoir that he has fond memories of Dunham. Obama could not find a microphone someplace to talk about how similar Belton was to his grandfather since he can’t find it in him to be “familiar” with the Lane murder after inciting mob violence towards a man who defended himself from a beating much like that Belton received.

"Ayeee I knocked out 5 woods since Zimmerman court!" young James Edwards tweeted on July 15 in the wake of George Zimmerman's acquittal for the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. Edwards's tweets surfaced after he and two of his homies were charged with killing Australian baseball player Chris Lane in Duncan, Oklahoma, last Friday.

For the record, "woods" is short for peckerwoods, a derogatory term for white people. If Edwards, who is black, knocked out five woods as claimed, he would hardly be unique. As Colin Flaherty chillingly documents in his frequently updated book, White Girl Bleed A Lot, the "knock-out game" has become something of a recreational outlet for bored black youths.

This "game" is just one form of black-on-nonblack assaults. Although hard to quantify, they seem to have intensified after the media put a racial spin on the Martin shooting eighteen months ago. Occasionally, the attackers have made the link explicit, claiming they were "doing it for Trayvon," revenge being a more honorable motive than boredom.

Two weeks after the Martin story surfaced, President Obama had the chance to defuse tensions. "Obviously this is a tragedy," said Obama solemnly in response to a planted question. After some empty bromides about everyone pulling together and the like, the president cut to the chase: "But my main message is to the parents of Trayvon — If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon."

By this time, the White House had access to all the information the Sanford Police Department did. The courageous step for Obama would have been to defend the Sanford Police Department and to demand an end to the media lynching of George Zimmerman. As an African American, he had more latitude to do this than a white politician would have. Instead, he chose to identify fully with the black "victim."

If Obama's son would have looked like Trayvon, he would have also looked like James Edwards and Chancey Luna, both charged with first-degree murder in Lane's death. Although south central Oklahoma would seem to be a long way from south central LA, the national media have created a dysfunctional culture accessible to all disaffected youths everywhere, even the occasional white kid like getaway driver Michael Jones.

Was it a thrill kill or part of a gang initiation? That would be the bushwhacking of Chris Lane, an Aussie college kid and baseball star. Lane was gunned down running along a country road near Duncan, Oklahoma.

Does it matter what motivated Allen Luna and James Francis Edwards, Jr., Chris Lane's accused killers, and Michael Dewayne Jones, an accessory, to off a young man with a promising future who was just going about the routine of his life on a summer's day?

In one sense it doesn't matter. Whether those three gangsta-infatuated creeps were thrill killing or murdering an innocent to be "made" (as the mob is fond of saying) as Crips just points to the rot — the nihilism — that has debauched subsets of American society. Terming this nihilism a cancer is cliché. Cancer isn't communicable, as best I know.

What the nation suffers is leprosy — a scary cultural and societal decay that is only more advanced in many black and Hispanic urban communities. It's present, too, in a growing number of white underclass communities (here and in Europe). For too long, that leprosy has been spreading to the broader culture with all its attendant sickness.

We have the progressives to thank for the contagion. In fact, let's thank the left for Luna, Edwards, and Jones right now. Over the decades, the left's compassionate government policies have done to the black underclass what earlier Americans did to the Indians: made them dependents on Uncle Sam. Indians were welfareized and quarantined on reservations.

The nation's hoods and increasingly, barrios are modern-day reservations, where independence, initiative, self-worth, and self-respect have been stripped from residents. Where family, community, and church have been debased in favor of the government handout machine and minority leaders who pimp their own people for gain. And a white liberal political establishment that profits handsomely from subjugated minorities.

But human nature being what it is — possessing deep needs for independence, self-sufficiency, and self-value — means underclass blacks and Hispanics seek out perverse ways of expressing those needs. Gangs are replacements for families; they lend identity, security, and worth. They're enterprises where the ambitious, with talent and moxy, seek to better themselves — albeit through violence and crime.

There's also the anti-traditionalism, anti-establishmentism, and permissiveness that grew out of the left and the left's spawn, the 60s youth movement. This ethos of break the rules and do as you feel hasn't liberated the nation's underclasses; it's robbed them of anchoring principles and certitudes. In smashing compasses, progressives have served only to cut adrift millions of Americans, launching them on a sea where everything's made up as one goes and right and wrong are matters of perception and opinion.

The 60s ethos hasn't done much for the middle and upper classes, either — at least, among those segments that subscribe to it. Relativism and juvenile self-obsession and indulgence only hasten the rot.

Gangs and violence in underclass communities have been around long before Ellis Island, you say? True, indeed. But the Irish, Italians, and Jews, for example, didn't stay in the shanties and tenements. There was something called "upward mobility," which these ethnic groups aspired to. Poor immigrants and their families cycled through the nation's Hell's Kitchens and into the mainstream, adapting happily to the norms, values, and virtues that comprised traditional America.

Today, blacks and other underclass Americans are victims of generational poverty and welfare dependency. They're trapped not by lack of potential, but lack of social structures that instill virtues and channel their energies into constructive pursuits. Even government schools are nearly useless. The important social structures are family, neighborhood, and church; all were once the sinews binding poor communities together and giving poor kids the chance for better lives.

Does any sensible American really like rap or gangsta rap? Music full of anger, hate for authority — the police, in particular — and denigration of women. Full of talk of law breaking and killing. Full of idiotic preening and braggadocio about being unschooled and unmotivated toward conventional success. Does anyone think that wearing pants down around one's buttocks, tattooing one's body, and piercing one's nose, ears, tongue, nipples, and whatever else is indicative of anything other than the atavistic? Affectations that have seeped into the middle and upper classes.

Other than being a name on street signs and a day off in January, does Martin Luther King, Jr., matter much to urban black kids anymore? King who dressed in suits and spoke impeccable English? Who led a nonviolent civil rights movement and preached integration and unity among the races, not hate and division? Who wanted mainstreaming and conventional success for blacks?

Or Jackie Robinson, the subject of a recent movie, 42. One might dare say that Jackie Robinson is a stronger role model for nonblack kids than he is for poor black kids nowadays (if they even know who Robinson was and what he achieved).

The murder of Chris Lane makes apparent the advance of violent black urban culture into the hinterlands. Apparent — not recent, and it's been further facilitated by the internet and social media.

The accused murderers and their accomplice were "wannabe" Crips, according to James Johnson, a black man, who reported that the three teens were hiding out in a car at -- of all places — Duncan's Immanuel Baptist Church. Johnson says that the trio had threatened his teenage son on Facebook and feared his boy was next to be shot. Johnson says that Luna, Edwards, and Lane had attempted to recruit his son, but Johnson had shielded him from the teens. The trio, if Johnson is correct, had a "join or die" ultimatum for his son.

Said Johnson in a Melbourne (Australia) Herald Sun report:

"I've been living here all my life and we never had this, but in the past few years gangs from Lawton have been coming here," Johnson said of the Crips.”

Again per the Herald Sun, Johnson furnished this background about the accused killers:

“Johnson's son also attends Duncan High School, where suspect Luna and Edwards Jr. were students. He said he knew both boys, and described them as "troublemakers" and "bullies" who had "no parental supervision."

Given the social media depicting the trio making gang-like gestures and one handling a rifle, these teens were infatuated by gang culture and gang violence. But Luna, Edwards, and Jones could have been more than taken with the Crips; they might have been initiating themselves into the gang.

The Crips and other street gangs often require an act of violence -- up to and including murder — to initiate as a gangsta, or as the Crips say, become a "cuzz."

Robert Walker, a retired state and federal law enforcement officer and gang expert, runs the website "Gangs or Us," a gang identification resource.

Of the Crips and Bloods, Walker writes:

“In the early 1980's, members of both gangs surfaced outside Los Angeles and the rest of California, primarily to sell cocaine. Investigative reports in 1991 placed Crips or Bloods in 32 States and 113 cities. However, these migrations are not orchestrated by any sort of national leadership. Instead, criminal acts often are committed or directed by individual leaders (who change frequently), rather than as the result of some hierarchical or collective decision making process.

The Crips is a loose association of some 200 gangs, many of which are at war with one another, and none of whom recognizes or exerts any kind of central authority. Individual gangs are equally marginal in their organization. Most are loosely knit coalitions of small, autonomous cliques.”

The Crips seem like Al Qaida precursors, with an emphasis on autonomy and independent action. The Crips, Bloods, and other gangs are opportunists, whose members have sought out communities (markets, if you will) where they can startup or dominate the drug trade.

That the Crips and gang culture enticed three Duncan juveniles and inspired them to commit a random act of murder is notable only because of the place and the victim. For Duncan citizens, Chris Lane's murder was novel and shocking. In inner-cities — hoods — across the land, senseless gang murders and mayhem are sorry ways of life.

What passes for “leadership” in the modern “civil-rights” community has frequently compared the shooting of Trayvon Martin to the brutal murder of black teenager Emmett Till in the 1950s. One of the people who did this is billionaire Oprah Winfrey, fresh from nearly destroying the life of an innocent Swiss shop clerk by falsely accusing her of racism. Asked about Winfrey’s comparison on MSNBC Friday morning, Emmett Till’s cousin Simeon Wright replied:

“The comparison to me is similar; there are a lot of parallels between Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin. Number one: Trayvon was killed by a white boy that got out of his truck armed to the teeth — chased him down, did kill him. And then the jury did the same thing they did in 1955 with Emmett Till: they came back with a non-guilty vote. That broke my heart. That tells me that things have not changed as much as people would like to say they have changed. I asked my wife this morning if she had ever been consulted on one of these polls. I’ve never been asked about one of these polls.”

Every single thing Simeon Wright said about George Zimmerman is a lie. He’s not white, he’s not a “boy,” he wasn’t “armed to the teeth,” and he didn’t chase Trayvon Martin down. Zimmerman killed Martin in self-defense, quite unlike the heartless murderers of Emmett Till. Of course, the MSNBC anchor, Craig Melvin, challenged not a word of this ludicrous slander.

This is about more than the production of Trayvon mythology, which proceeds at a furious pace, moving the manufactured false narrative further and further away from the facts introduced during Zimmerman’s trial. Oprah Winfrey’s cooked-up anecdote about racist Swiss clerks refusing to show her an expensive handbag, because they assumed a black woman could not afford such luxuries, was not about Winfrey deciding to annihilate a random store employee for kicks. I doubt Winfrey gave the clerk a second thought. She clearly never imagined that her version of events would be challenged. She was just trying to throw out a quick talk-show-ready anecdote about how racism persists around the world, even in nations renowned for their peaceful tolerance, never mind squalid, hateful America.

The point of all this is to manufacture despair. The polls Simeon Wright disparaged, by claiming he and his wife have never been consulted for one, are polls about the improving state of race relations in the United States. He’s saying those polls are full of baloney, because there’s still racism everywhere. And he doesn’t mean the kind of racism that led a couple of teenage black gang-banger wanabes to shoot Australian college student Chris Lane in the back while he was out jogging. Wright means institutionalized white racism, a fog of hatred and disdain that hasn’t cleared much since 1965.

The most obvious difference between the Left/media response to the Lane murder, and the Trayvon Martin shooting, is that mighty efforts were made to portray George Zimmerman as the agent of a cruel and racist system, not merely a trigger-happy racist himself. He became a piñata for gun-control activists. Loud and repeated warnings were issued that a legion of heavily armed, bloodthirsty homeowners and neighborhood-watch volunteers lurked from coast to coast, waiting to prey upon any young black man who wandered into their suburban kill zones.

The aftermath of the Zimmerman trial has been a concerted nationwide effort to attack Stand Your Ground laws, which had nothing to do with the shooting of Trayvon Martin but they’re supposedly a totem of the evil system that keeps minorities down. The group that camped out in Florida’s capitol for a month, demanding a special legislative session to erase the state’s Stand Your Ground law, called itself the “Dream Defenders.” The implication is that the dreams of innocent young people are under attack because of SYG laws, which is absolute rubbish but quite consistent with the sustained atmosphere of despair hanging over America.

The racial grievance industry isn’t the only smokestack pumping into that atmosphere. Despair suffuses every aspect of our political culture. Those who would rule us as our permanent protectors want us to believe ourselves surrounded by unbeatable villains. Take one step onto the frozen tundra of the free market, and you’ll be torn apart by corporate wolves. You’ll need tax-raising politicians to help you get even with the rich bastards who stole your rightful prosperity. (Excepting millionaire politicians, entertainers, and athletes, of course. They earn their fortunes!)

ObamaCare is a broken-down wreck, and if any private corporation had been responsible for it, you’d be told to view it as a swindle whose perpetrators belong in jail but instead, the people who want to shut it down are depicted as callous brutes who enjoy watching poor people get sick. You’ll die without government insurance subsidies, you’ll starve without food stamps, you’ll go broke without a government-managed financial system, the Earth will be destroyed without government-enforced environmental orthodoxy, and if politicians weren’t insisting on higher pay plus mandated benefits, you’d be enslaved by evil corporate overlords.

The most powerful President since FDR, a man whose assumed powers would be labeled despotic by the Founding Fathers, excuses his failures by claiming he’s just a victim of these shadowy racist villains, too. He’s not responsible for anything that’s happened since 2009, no matter how many times he seizes new executive powers. The dead-parrot economy and moribund job market he’s delivered are the best you have a right to expect; it would be even worse, if President Obama hadn’t done whatever he did with all those trillions you’re supposed to forget he spent. If the government borrows or spends a dollar less, America will collapse into a pile of dust. If the dull, selfish people of the United States reclaim an inch of the ground they have lost to the State, mere anarchy will be loosed upon the world. Despair, helplessness, doom.

We are actively encouraged to see ourselves as children. Grown men are frequently referred to as “boys,” and officially treated as such by ObamaCare. Teenagers sigh that they have nothing meaningful to do, and nothing is expected of them. They’re treated the way earlier generations would regard children half their age. Prolonged adolescence is another form of despair. People who are held responsible for nothing see little reason to make extraordinary effort. Responsibility is a core component of dignity, liberty, and achievement. If people are not accountable for their failures, who cares about their successes?

All of this is alien to human nature. It is enforced upon us by a vast political system armed with gigantic resources. In our hearts, we know we’re not supposed to rely on other people’s money for food and shelter. We know we’re meant to compete and cooperate with our fellows, not regard ourselves as hapless victims of their perpetual disdain. Economist Walter Williams, who is a person of color, recently observed that competitive sports teams don’t accept the low standards and excuses for failure found throughout the educational system, and black people do just fine on those teams. When much is expected, much is accomplished and the soul of every young person, black or white, boy or girl, yearns to hear the call to excellence.

Perhaps one reason kids love sports is that big games are played on lofty peaks that ride high above the fog of despair. After years of trudging through dumbed-down courses, lowered standards, and assurances that the deck is forever stacked against them, they long to step onto a brightly-lit field of honor and show what they can really do, win some victories, earn some applause. It’s not just about earning big bucks as a star athlete or entertainer, although the money is nice too. It’s the dream of commanding respect, standing tall, exceeding expectations, and taking your well-deserved seat in a great brotherhood of equals.

But who respects hapless children who believe they can never win? If you accept the right of the State to use compulsive force to correct inequality of outcome, you believe the targets of that force are your enemies, they deserve to suffer, and you could never beat them on your own. You can’t beat any of the Left’s boogeymen on your own. Your perpetual fear and despair are the source of their power.

Uncle Sam’s Plantation

"Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all." — Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

Prior to the ratification of the 13th Amendment on December 6, 1865 slavery was legal in the United States. The Amendment stated:

“Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

Prior to the passage of the 13^th Amendment slaves living in states that were at rebellion with the Union (Confederate States) were liberated by executive order issued by Abraham Lincoln through his 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation did not affect the Border States and did not abolish slavery. It took a Constitutional amendment to accomplish that.

Prior to abolishing slavery Blacks were considered property of the slave-holding masters. In the South they lived on plantations where they either worked in the fields or houses of their masters. They lived in substandard housing furnished by the plantation owners. They their basic needs of food and clothing were provided by their masters. They were not allowed to learn to read and write — not even the Bible. Their children became property of the masters the moment they were born and they were denied the basic rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. If they escaped the plantation and were caught they were severely punished and made an example to other slaves with he sought of fleeing the plantation. Even if they did manage to escape and make it to a free state they had no employable skills other than providing manual labor.

After the passage of the 13^th Amendment many slaves remained on the very same plantations where they been living. With the passage and ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868 these former slaves were afforded the rights of full citizenship including the right to vote. Section 1 of the 14^th Amendment states:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law.”

It did not take long for the politicians and northern carpetbaggers to realize that they had a block of voters ready to be cultivated by merely promising them free stuff, stuff they could not or would not deliver.

It took 100 years for Blacks to gain equality within our civil society. There were periods of racial discrimination, especially in the south and large urban centers where Blacks had migrated to during our participation in World Wars 1 and 2. There was the segregation of Blacks from the military, after they had served during the Civil War and policing the Indians in our western territories, and from federal employment by the progressive Woodrow Wilson. It was not until WWII that Blacks were once again allowed into the military and government service. Due to the actions of Republicans in protecting the righ ts of Blacks most Blacks voted Republicans.

Fast forward to 1964 and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. The Democrats were now in power and wanted to remain in power so they instituted a multitude of government programs designed to put Blacks back on the plantation — Uncle Sam’s Plantation.

Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society is the logical extension of Progressive political thought and FDR’s New Deal. While the Founders held that the task of good government is to secure its citizens’ natural rights, LBJ argued that government must eradicate all external constraints—legal, economic, educational, and environmental—which hamper the “spiritual fulfillment” of its citizens. The extensive regulations and programs of the Great Society are thus meant to guarantee not only the right to pursue happiness but also the full achievement of it.

In his Great Society Speech given at the University of Michigan in 1964 Johnson said:

“Your imagination, your initiative, and your indignation will determine whether we build a society where progress is the servant of our needs, or a society where old values and new visions are buried under unbridled growth. For in your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.

The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning.

The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.

It is a place where man can renew contact with nature. It is a place which honors creation for its own sake and for what is adds to the understanding of the race. It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.

But most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor.

So I want to talk to you today about three places where we begin to build the Great Society - in our cities, in our countryside, and in our classrooms.”

Lyndon B. Johnson anchored his Great Society program in the Progressive understanding of freedom: Freedom in its fullest sense encompasses more than the formal or legal right to do a thing; freedom entails the ability to affect that thing. Thus the central conceptual element of the Great Society—the purpose of both civil rights and the War on Poverty—is the elimination of any economic, legal, or social hindrances to the achievement of excellence and the “fulfillment of the human spirit.”

The Founders believed that the causes of necessity are rooted in human nature itself, and that a government that seeks to eradicate necessity quickly becomes tyrannical. By contrast, LBJ held that specific government policies and programs, initiated and guided by bureaucratic experts, could overcome the unhappiness and discontent brought about especially by racial injustice and poverty.

Consequently, his Great Society legislation focuses on cities (developing community and aesthetically pleasing spaces), the countryside and the environment at large (engaging in conservation efforts to make beauty accessible to all), and education (funding not only programs and initiatives for all levels of schooling but also educational broadcasting for the public at large).

Declaring that “the Great Society is a place where the City of Man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce, but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community,” LBJ argued for a radically new purpose for the federal government: It would go beyond securing natural rights and seek the fulfillment of the longings of the human soul. This was a far departure for the shining city upon a hill expressed by John Winthorpe in 1630 — a city devoted to God. Johnson and the progressives that followed him wanted an equality of results, not equality of opportunity.

It did not take the Progressives and the Democrat Party to seize the opportunity for creating a permanent block of voters by putting them on Uncle Sam’s Plantation. They did through throwing billions of coercive federal taxpayer dollars at states and counties for welfare programs. The federal dollars were and are used for substandard subsidized housing much like the antebellum South. In fact many of these housing projects are falling apart and lack proper sanitation facilities. They are laced with vermin and are homes for drug pushers and other criminal gangs.

They did it with offering food stamps, WIC, Medicaid, and aid to dependent children where single parenting was promoted. If the father lives in the household the aid is cut. It encourages women to have multiple babies out of wedlock in order to increase their benefit payments. We have generations of teen age girls having children who in turn have children out of wedlock.

According to the New York Times:

“Large racial differences remain:73 percent of black children are born outside marriage, compared with 53 percent of Latinos and 29 percent of whites. And educational differences are growing. About 92 percent of college-educated women are married when they give birth, compared with 62 percent of women with some post-secondary schooling and 43 percent of women with a high school diploma or less, according to Child Trends.”

The children who grow up in these fatherless homes are very likely to fall into gangs and crimes and have little chance at success by escaping the plantation especially when they have criminal records.

While antebellum slave masters forbade slaves from learning to read and write the current serfs of the Uncle Sam’s Plantation are denied this ability by the poor condition of the K-12 school system in on the plantation. The school system is controlled by coercive federal dollars from the Department of Education and the Teachers Unions. Neither is dedicated to education — they are devoted to increasing power and feathering their nests. That’s’ why they fight a system of giving vouchers to parents where they can send their children to private, charter, or better schools. Washington D.C. is a good case in point where the successful voucher program was cancelled by the Obama administration due to pressure from the teachers unions.

According to a report by the AP on Yahoo News In many cases, workers in low-wage positions are not using the training programs their employers offer because they don't even know they exist, the two-part AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey of both workers and employers found. Two-thirds of employers said they offer coaching or mentoring programs and 61 percent provide on-the-job training. But only 36 percent of low-wage workers reported that their employers offer such programs.

The ability to move up the career ladder has become more important as America's economic recovery is fueled by a surge in low-wage jobs at restaurants, health care centers and manufacturing sites. Job training and education can play a major role in helping these workers advance their careers and someday reach middle-class status. At the same time, employers say they invest in job training to retain current workers, reduce turnover and improve the quality of products and services.

Yet the surveys revealed a wide disparity between employers and workers in how they view the importance of training programs. While 83 percent of employers said job training is extremely or very important for upward mobility, only half of low-wage workers felt as strongly about additional training. Similarly, 77 percent of employers rated education as extremely or very important, while only 41 percent of low-wage workers rated it similarly.

The burning question here and not addressed in the report is how can young people be trained for jobs and advancement when they have not graduated high school and very low reading and comprehension skills?

One of the largest bribes to keep the serfs on the plantation are food stamps. The House Agriculture Committee has reported out its version of a new farm bill that will cut $16.5 billion over 10 years from funding of SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), once known as food stamps.

The cuts in the House bill exceed those in the Senate bill by $12 billion.

Sixteen-and-a-half billion dollars over a decade amount to a whopping 2 percent cut in SNAP program expenditures, which last year alone came to $78 billion. At a time when we are running trillion-dollar annual federal budget deficits, it's hard to see a 2 percent cut in any large spending program as provocative. Particularly in a program like SNAP, where spending in 2011 was over 400 percent higher than in 2000.

Yet, liberals are predictably ringing the alarm. Assistant House Democratic leader James Clyburn of South Carolina called the cuts "abominable," suggesting they will jeopardize nutrition of children and that it's all about protecting "the wealthy and the well to do."

If cutting back on SNAP spending is about protecting "the wealthy," as Clyburn would have us believe, why do big corporations such as Pepsi, Coca Cola, Kraft Foods and Kroger support and lobby for the program, as Time magazine recently reported?

It's because government-spending programs, even if initiated with the best of intentions, wind up being about interests, not efficiency or compassion.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, 18 million Americans received SNAP benefits in 2000. By 2011, this had grown to 45 million, one in seven Americans.

Liberals tells us that this program's mind-boggling growth is explained by our foundering economy.

But, as Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama points out, spending on this program increased 100 percent from 2001 to 2006, a period over which there was no increase in the rate of unemployment.

From 2007 to 2011, spending increased 135 percent. But CBO attributes only about 65 percent of the dramatic growth in program spending and the number of recipients to the recession.

Here's what else has happened: It has become increasingly easy to qualify for SNAP benefits, the government has been spending more taxpayer funds promoting the program, and the stigma of SNAP, food stamps, being perceived as a welfare program has disappeared.

A New York Times article in 2010 carried the headline, "Once Stigmatized, Food Stamps Find Acceptance." The article notes posters in New York City announcing "Applying for food stamps is easier than ever" and quotes Eric Bost, head of the program under President George W. Bush, saying, "I assure you, food stamps is not welfare."

According to CBO, three-fourths of recipients are "categorically eligible," which means they automatically qualify by virtue of participating in some other federal or state welfare program. They need not be receiving cash benefits from these programs. Simply having received an information pamphlet can be enough.

At one time, recipients received their food-stamp benefits in dollar-denominated paper vouchers presented at the cash register. Now benefits come on a sharp-looking electronic debit card like any credit or debit card.

And the fact that SNAP funds are provided by the federal government, but administered and spent by the states, is a proven formula, as in Medicaid, for undisciplined spending growth.

The only major difference to today’s Federal Plantation in regards to the pre-Civil War plantation is that Uncle Sam’s Plantation has no physical or legal barriers to escape. The members serfs of the plantation are free to leave anytime they wish. The problem is that the Progressive politicians keep bribing them by the offer of more stuff like free cell phones and TVs if they stay. Rather than physical force they use the coercive force of the federal purse to keep them on the plantation where the politicians can control them and garner their votes.

Despite trillions of dollars spent on social programs since the 1960s, there is little evidence that the poor have benefited. In a blistering critique, former welfare mother Star Parker has become an advocate in espousing how government has harmed rather than helped the poor—and what citizens can do to fight back. Parker, the president and founder of the Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education, encourages faith and individual responsibility to empower the poor to escape Uncle Sam’s “sophisticated poverty plantation.

It is other conservative Black leaders and organizations such as CURE and CORE that are leading the way to get Blacks and other poor off Uncle Sam’s Plantation and rise to their full potential. They preaching the same message to Blacks the Frederick Douglas preached after the Civil War. It will take time and some very brave leaders to end the Federal Plantation System.

The most compassionate thing that can be done today is exactly what is not happening: economic growth, job creation and getting folks to work. The path to this end is less government, not more.

To Sequester Or Not To Sequester — That Is The Question

“We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.” — Thomas Jefferson, letter to Samuel Kercheval — 1816

The news is full of talk and debate of the subject of something called “Sequestration.” But what does sequestration mean?

According to the Glossary of Political Economy Terms sequestration means:

“Originally a legal term referring generally to the act of valuable property being taken into custody by an agent of the court and locked away for safekeeping, usually to prevent the property from being disposed of or abused before a dispute over its ownership can be resolved. But the term has been adapted by Congress in more recent years to describe a new fiscal policy procedure originally provided for in the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Deficit Reduction Act of 1985 — an effort to reform Congressional voting procedures so as to make the size of the Federal government's budget deficit a matter of conscious choice rather than simply the arithmetical outcome of a decentralized appropriations process in which no one ever looked at the cumulative results until it was too late to change them. If the dozen or so appropriation bills passed separately by Congress provide for total government spending in excess of the limits Congress earlier laid down for itself in the annual Budget Resolution, and if Congress cannot agree on ways to cut back the total (or does not pass a new, higher Budget Resolution), then an "automatic" form of spending cutback takes place. This automatic spending cut is what is called "sequestration."

Under sequestration, an amount of money equal to the difference between the cap set in the Budget Resolution and the amount actually appropriated is "sequestered" by the Treasury and not handed over to the agencies to which it was originally appropriated by Congress. In theory, every agency has the same percentage of its appropriation withheld in order to take back the excessive spending on an "across the board" basis. However, Congress has chosen to exempt certain very large programs from the sequestration process (for example, Social Security and certain parts of the Defense budget), and the number of exempted programs has tended to increase over time — which means that sequestration would have to take back gigantic shares of the budgets of the remaining programs in order to achieve the total cutbacks required, virtually crippling the activities of the unexempted programs.”

As the former owner of a medium-sized business my partners and I were forced to make cuts a four times in my 33-year tenure as an owner and principal. These cuts were due to turn-downs in the economy — turn-down that reduced our client base.

When these turn-downed occurred we, as principals, would gather and the CFO would present us with his financial projections showing that if we did not make cuts our bank would freeze our line of credit — credit we needed for cash flow and payroll. He would show us where our expenditures had grown and how we needed to reduce these costs if we wanted to remain a healthy, viable business and protect our most valued employees. It was up to us, as managers to make the tough decisions as to where to make these cuts — cuts that were very distasteful to some of us.

We would always begin with our general and administrative costs — costs for things such as office supplies, new equipment, travel, etc. The problem was that these cost reductions, while prudent and necessary were never enough to satisfy the CFO’s projections. We had to cut deeper and this was always with staff. Our largest expense, amounting to almost 50%, was employee costs. These costs included direct payroll and indirect employee costs including; medical insurance and employer contributions to Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, state disability insurance, and other mandated taxes.

In times of economic growth we always managed to add staff that we thought was needed. We would have to consider a secretary here and marketing assistant there. Sometimes it was a project engineer or project manager who did not have enough work. All of these people were good people who had been scrupulously hired and trained. This was always a tough decision and created vigorous debate on who should be laid off. Everyone had a favorite and it inevitably came down to my favorite was more important than your favorite. Eventually, after painful debate decisions were reached and the necessary reductions in staff took place. Of course as the economy turned and we entered a period of growth we would once again over-staff and have to go through this painful process again.

Our federal, state, and municipal governments go through the same cycles. The difference is that their “line of credit” can be easily increased by borrowing for the people and other governments and they can increase revenue by imposing new taxes and raising the existing taxes.

The politicians who control spending all have favorites and like us each one has a favorite more important than the next person’s favorite. It is those favorites that placated their constituencies and keep them in power. It tough to tell those who voted for on the basis that would get more free stuff to tell than that free stuff was going away. This is why we ended up with sequestration calling for across the board cuts.

During the summer 2011 debt ceiling battle, President Obama's White House came up with the idea of sequestration. It is a mechanism designed to trigger automatic spending cuts in the event that a congressional "super committee" couldn't agree to at least $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction.

Congress passed the White House proposal, and Obama signed it into law. And in November 2011, Obama vowed, "I will veto any effort to get rid of those automatic spending cuts to domestic and defense spending. There will be no easy off-ramps on this one."

How times have changed. With the automatic spending cuts scheduled to go into effect March 1, it's now Obama who is imploring Congress to undo them. As is his wont, he's resorting to demagoguery to make his case.

Surrounding himself with first responders during a speech on Tuesday, Obama predicted a virtual apocalypse if the cuts he once supported now go into effect. "Emergency responders like the ones who are here today -- their ability to help communities respond to and recover from disasters will be degraded," he said. "Border Patrol agents will see their hours reduced. FBI agents will be furloughed. Federal prosecutors will have to close cases and let criminals go. Air traffic controllers and airport security will see cutbacks, which mean more delays at airports across the country. Thousands of teachers and educators will be laid off. Tens of thousands of parents will have to scramble to find child care for their kids. Hundreds of thousands of Americans will lose access to primary care and preventive care like flu vaccinations and cancer screenings."

In the real world, however, the sequester cuts are actually modest when viewed relative to the budget as a whole. As the accompanying graph demonstrates, the $85 billion in combined cuts to defense and nondefense programs amount to just about 1 percent of money spent by federal, state and local governments. Over a decade, the $1.2 trillion in scheduled cuts are barely more than a rounding error when compared with the $48 trillion the federal government would otherwise spend, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

To say sequester will not be painful for many would be untrue. But if Obama wants to preserve his credibility, he should probably stifle the Chicken Little routine. The historical and continued growth in government spending will not even stop to take a breath, because the "cuts" in spending are actually just reductions in the projected growth of government spending.

Even with sequester's $84 billion in cuts (2.5%of federal budget) this year, government spending will be higher than it was last year. In fact, spending is projected to increase every year over the next decade.

If Obama can't manage an ever-growing budget like this one without turning criminals loose on the population, then perhaps he's out of his league serving as president. I don’t think he would have lasted long at one our principal meetings.

When the Budget Control Act was adopted, it called for the automatic cuts to begin on January 1, 2013 —three months into the U.S. Government’s fiscal year (October). To the surprise of no one, the House and the Senate and the President didn't want to live with the fruits of their fruitlessness; and so on January 2, 2013 they passed a quick law delaying the effects of sequestration until March 1, 2013 — five months into the fiscal year. That bill was grandly named the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012. That's the one that raised income taxes on rich people and payroll taxes on the rest of us thus providing tax relief to no one.

You might have noticed that the House, the Senate and the President are so worried about this looming March 1 deadline that they are — all 536 of them — on vacation. Here's what we know: The Congress and the President are incapable of cutting anything from any program, ever. If the only way to reduce spending is by instituting automatic cuts, then I am for allowing sequester to take effect and see what happens.

Instead of letting obsolete government programs die, bureaucrats come up with new excuses to keep spending. The Washington Post reports on a federally supported program that is so bad that even President Obama wants it cut. The Christopher Columbus Fellowship spent 80 percent of its money on overhead. Three Republicans introduced legislation to end it, but the subsidy lives on, because one senator, Thad Cochran, R-Miss., likes it. So America continues to move toward bankruptcy. Instead of addressing that, the politicians will spend more. Instead of announcing 15 new 'manufacturing' hubs, the president should just announce 300 million 'do whatever you want with your own money' hubs. Then American citizens can do as they please.

Many lawmakers view commitment as nothing more than a marriage of convenience that lasts only through Election Day. Where else can a presidential candidate run for office proclaiming 'Read my lips: no new taxes' and within months of assuming office, support a massive tax hike on the American people? Politicians including President Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. of Pennsylvania pledged fidelity to the Second Amendment during their campaigns, yet now these Democrats propose and support the most comprehensive attack on gun ownership in generations.

The debate over cuts always centers on the efficacy of the program being cut and not on the constitutionality of the program. What warrant in the Constitution allows for financial support for teachers, local police, and firefighters? As important and useful these classes are they are to be supported from local property taxes. It makes great TV, however, to line up doctors, firefighters and cops behind the President as he whines about how this miniscule cut will cause great harm to the citizens. That’s just so much balderdash.

The scheduled implementation of the sequestration spending cuts is a little less than a week away, which has Republicans, Democrats, bureaucrats, special interests, and the media warning that the apocalypse is nigh. Sequestration isn’t the ideal way to cut spending, but it would be a start. And despite all the wailing and gnashing of teeth, the areas of federal spending targeted by sequestration should be cut. Here are a few recommendations — recommendations based upon the constitutional validly of the program or the bloated budgets that have grown over the years.

Let’s begin with the Department of Defense. While all defense spending falls within Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. However, over the years the DOD has such a massive budget that many within the department have no idea on where the money is being spent. The Department of Defense oversees a vast array of people and assets at home and abroad. We would improve the nation’s security by reducing our global overreach and adopting a more restrained and defensive strategy. We should cut the number of military personnel and reduce overseas deployments to save money and relieve burdens on military families.

The department spent about $688 billion in fiscal 2012, or $5,800 per U.S. household. It employs 2.3 million people, and it spends $230 billion a year on procurement, research, and construction. I am sure that under intelligent management the managers in the Pentagon can survive a 2.5% cut without affecting our national defense one iota.

The department’s budget is built on an excessively ambitious strategy that tries to do too much, but leaves the nation less safe from true threats. Defense is a core federal function, but much of the work of today’s military has little to do with protecting our vital interests.

Rising personnel costs have added to the ballooning defense budget. The Army and Marines have grown 15 percent since 2001, driven by the view that future wars will resemble those in Iraq and Afghanistan. But it is not in our interest to topple foreign regimes and attempt long-term nation building. For combating terrorism, we do not need such a large Army as we have today. We have seen what small, well trained special operations units and technology, such as UAVs, can do in today’s asymmetrical warfare against terrorism.

Cuts to federal pay: With projections of huge federal deficits for years to come, policymakers should scour the budget looking for places to cut spending. One area to find savings is the generous compensation paid to the federal government's 2.1 million civilian workers.1 Total wages and benefits paid to executive branch civilians amounted to $236 billion in 2011, indicating that compensation is a major federal expense that can be trimmed.

During the last decade, compensation of federal employees rose much faster than compensation of private-sector employees. As a consequence, the average federal civilian worker now earns twice as much in wages and benefits as the average worker in the U.S. private sector. A recent job-to-job comparison found that federal workers earned higher wages than did private-sector workers in four-fifths of the occupations examined.

The federal workforce has become an elite island of secure and high-paid workers, separated from the ocean of average American workers competing in the global economy. It is time for some restraint. Federal wages should be frozen or cut, overly generous federal benefits should be overhauled, and the federal workforce downsized through program terminations and privatization. It is unfair to ask taxpayers to foot an ever-increasing bill for federal workers, especially when private-sector compensation has not kept pace.

As a note on the size of the federal workforce I can testify to a personal experience I had at the Department of Commerce in 1998. This was during the Clinton era of “downsizing the size of the federal government. I had an appointment with an Assistant Secretary of Commerce at the Hoover Building in Washington D.C. When I walked into his office I noticed two women sitting in his outer office talking with each other. I paid no attention to this as I was more concerned about my meeting with the assistant secretary. When I entered his office and introduced myself he was very polite and attentive to my comments regarding international trade, specifically for my firm’s wish to offer geographic information services in turkey. As we were talking he kept glancing out of his window at the two women in the outer office. Finally he could not contain his frustration any longer and launched into a tirade about the inefficiencies and bloated size of the federal work force. He told me had been saddled with these two women, without his request or need, because the department where they previously worked had no need of them and wanted to reduce their staff and look good. He proclaimed, with some degree of disgust, that this is the way the federal government downsizes and pushed employees from one department to the other to hide them. That’s the way it works all throughout federal and state government. I believe the federal workforce cut be cut by at least 10% to 15% during the next five years by attrition and buy-outs if the executive was branch was serious and the various departments were strictly monitored for playing hide the pea game. If my firm could do this without skipping a beat I am sure the feds can do the same.

Federal Grants to Firefighters: In 2012 the House passed a $40.6 billion Homeland Security appropriations bill for fiscal 2012. The Constitutional Authority Statement for the bill cited Congress’s authority to appropriate money and the General Welfare Clause. Citing the General Welfare Clause might be appropriate for activities associated with the common defense of the nation. However, it is not an appropriate justification for something like the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Assistance to Firefighters Grant program, which distributes federal taxpayer money to local fire departments.

Firefighting is a purely local concern and should be funded by those who benefit from a local fire department’s services. Why in the world am I paying federal taxes in Pennsylvania to a bureaucracy in Washington so that it can turn around and send a check (minus a cut for the bureaucracy) back to my local fire department as well as to thousands of other fire departments across the country?

In a Cato essay on constitutional basics, Roger Pilon explains that the General Welfare Clause clause was not intended to provide cover for Congress to spend money on whatever it wanted

“The General Welfare Clause is followed by a detailed listing or enumeration of activities that Congress is allowed to engage in. Were this passage to be read simply as authorizing Congress to tax and spend for the general welfare, as many read it today, Congress would have been granted all but unlimited power and the enumeration of particular powers immediately thereafter would have been to no purpose. Thus, the passage must be read as permitting taxing only for those enumerated ends; and the clause restricts such funding to the general welfare only, not to the welfare of particular parties.”

Our Founding Fathers did not intend to give Congress a blank check to spend money on the passions of the day or to placate a narrow group of constituents at the expense of the people in order to garner votes to retain their power. As Alexis de Tocqueville stated in his Democracy in America:

“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.”

Head Start and Other Subsidies: The Department of Health and Human Services runs a vast array of health and nonhealth subsidy programs. Outside of Medicare, Medicaid, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the department spends about $125 billion a year on more than 400 different programs.

There are four HHS state and local subsidy programs aimed at the low-income population: Head Start, the Child Care Fund, the Social Services Block Grant, and Low-Income Home Energy Assistance. These programs are intensely bureaucratic and susceptible to fraud and abuse. There is also little evidence that the programs generate much of a return for the large taxpayer resources invested in them. For example, a recent authoritative study found that Head Start offers no lasting advantages to the children who take part in the program. It found that by the third grade any advantage a child had from participating in Head Start had been lost.

There are no economic or constitutional reasons why the federal government should be involved in these four programs and the other state and local welfare activities of the HHS. Congress should end HHS state and local aid programs, and individual state governments should decide for themselves what taxpayer support, if any, is appropriate for these sorts of activities. As I have stated to ad nauseum the powers enumerated in Article I, Section of the Constitution provide no warrant for these welfare programs. It is left to the individual states to decide if they are worthy of taxing their citizens to support them.

Under the Constitution, the federal government was assigned specific limited powers and most government functions were left to the states. The Framers reinforced this decentralized structure with the addition of the Constitution's Tenth Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Providing welfare or social services to individuals, despite the good intentions of policymakers, is not a constitutional role of the federal government.

Practically, federal funding of state and local activities results in multiple levels of wasteful bureaucracy and poor program oversight. Funding for welfare programs originates at the federal level, goes through state and local governments, and then to nonprofit groups and the ultimate recipients. As the money flows through each level, a portion is lost to administrative overhead. Each government and organization involved consumes program funding with proposal writing, funding allocation issues, reviews, reporting, regulatory compliance, litigation, and many other bureaucratic activities. It’s time to end these programs for two main reasons: they are unconstitutional and they are wasteful. But once again the politicians have promised free stuff and are unwilling to go back on those promises.

Community Development Programs: During most of the nation's history, there was little fiscal interaction between the federal government and local units of government. The federal government had a limited set of responsibilities, and most governmental functions were left to the states. Local governments were subsidized and regulated by state governments, but generally not by the federal government.

That structure changed dramatically during the mid-20th century as the federal government launched an array of housing, urban renewal, and community development efforts. It was a grand experiment to use the seemingly vast resources of the federal government to try to micromanage the life of cities and neighborhoods. The experiment was a grand failure, as illustrated by the many public housing projects that became plagued with crime and disorder.

In recent years, some housing and welfare programs have been reformed, but the federal government still funds an array of "community development" activities for local governments. Community development funds were originally targeted to large cities in decline, but today funding is spread widely to communities rich and poor, large and small.

In 2009, the Department of Housing and Urban Development spent $13.2 billion through its Office of Community Planning and Development. Here is a list of the main programs:

• Community Development Block Grants: This $8 billion program provides formula-based grants to localities for a range of development projects such as parking lots, museums, and street repairs.
• Home Housing Program: This $2.3 billion program provides formula-based grants for "affordable" housing.
• Homeless Assistance Grants: This $1.6 billion program funds local governments and nonprofit groups that offer assistance to the homeless.
• Housing for Persons with AIDs:. This $289 million program provides housing assistance for low-income persons with HIV/AIDs.
• Self-Help Homeownership Grants: This $50 million program provides grants to nonprofit groups that build low-income housing. The beneficiaries provide "sweat equity" by contributing labor toward the construction of their homes.
• Rural Subsidies: This $24 million program funds a wide range of projects in rural areas.

According to HUD, community development programs:

“Seek to develop viable communities by promoting integrated approaches that provide decent housing, a suitable living environment, and expanded economic opportunities for low- and moderate-income persons. The primary means towards this end is the development of partnerships among all levels of government and the private sector, including for-profit and nonprofit organizations.”

That description sounds warm and fuzzy, but the reality is that community development programs have a history of wasteful and ineffective spending.

Once again the Constitution provided the federal government with a modest array of enumerated powers and left most government responsibilities to the states. During most of the nation's history, local units of government were not financially tied to the federal government. The New Deal of the 1930s started to change that with major federal encroachment into formerly state and local policy areas. The federal government's micromanagement of local affairs accelerated in the 1960s with President Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" and the creation of the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1965.

Proponents of federal intervention claimed that state and local governments did not have the capacity to address urban blight, affordable housing, and economic development. That led to the launching of a huge range of urban grant programs, which President Johnson believed would create "cities of spacious beauty and living promise." (See President Johnson’s 1964 Great Society Speech) New aid programs were created for housing, urban renewal, education, and many other activities.

There were more grant programs enacted during the Johnson administration in just over six years than in all of the preceding years in U.S. history combined. There were 109 separate aid programs for state and local governments enacted in 1965 alone.5 President Johnson called his policies "creative federalism," but his activism dealt a severe blow to the federalism of the nation's Founders. By the end of the 1960s, many policymakers believed that the federal government should spend money on just about any local activity that it wanted, and questions regarding constitutional propriety were seldom considered.

Public Housing and Rental Subsidies: From Franklin Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson, Harry Truman to Bill Clinton, American presidents and their housing administrators have cut the ribbons on new versions of subsidized housing projects. Their theory has been consistent: private markets fail to provide housing for people with low incomes, and thus government subsidies are needed to fill the gap. Even presidents such as Richard Nixon and George W. Bush, who did not promote the construction of new public housing, accepted the idea that housing markets fail the poor and backed housing vouchers for rent in private dwellings.

Since the 1930s, the federal government has funded one expensive approach to low-income housing after another — without seeming to notice that the new approaches were made necessary less by market failure than by the failure of past public policies. Public housing projects erected to replace slums soon became "severely distressed," in the phrase used by one congressional study. Housing vouchers meant to end "concentrated poverty" instead moved it around. The low income housing tax credit program provides large subsidies to developers and few, if any, benefits to low-income families.

President Obama has said that his administration will end programs that have failed. Let's hope that the administration takes a fresh look at housing programs and recognizes the distortions and damage they have created. They have failed not because of poor architecture or design, nor minor management problems, but because of much more fundamental factors. Federal housing programs distort markets in ways that undermine neighborhoods, they encourage dependency, and they do not create incentives for long-term maintenance and improvements. They also rest on the false premise that the private sector cannot provide housing for those of modest means.

Federal housing subsidies have also been expensive to taxpayers. In 2009, the federal government will spend about $25 billion on rental aid for low-income households and about $8 billion on public housing projects.

Most people agree that big public housing projects can be noxious environments for their tenants. They are disproportionately home to extremely poor, single-parent households, along with the crime, social problems, and poor academic performance associated with that demography. Ironically, public housing was originally meant to serve lower middle class working families. But as the economy boomed after World War II, those families found private homes in the growing suburbs, and by the 1960s they had abandoned public housing. Left behind were poor, nonworking families, almost all of them headed by single women. Public housing became a key component of the vast welfare network that gave young women their own income and apartment if they gave birth to illegitimate kids. As the fatherless children of those women grew up and went astray, many projects became lawless places, overrun with gang activities.

Public housing projects have also damaged the city neighborhoods that surround them. They have radiated dysfunction and social problems outward, damaging local businesses and hurting nearby property values. They have also harmed surrounding cities by inhibiting rundown areas from coming back to life by attracting higher-income homeowners and new business investment. Fear of those who live in housing projects has driven away striving, upwardly mobile people who are the ones that make neighborhoods flourish.

City policies have often made matters worse by ensuring the permanence of public housing. Since public housing cannot be bought and sold on the market, it has disrupted the healthy recycling of property that helps dynamic cities grow and that spawns opportunities for rich and poor alike. Unlike privately owned buildings, public housing has almost always become property permanently fixed in a particular, low-value use, even as surrounding cities and metropolitan areas have changed.

In recent decades, hundreds of thousands of public housing units have been demolished after falling into disrepair and being overtaken by crime and disorder. Chicago's Robert Taylor homes, for example, consisting of 28 apartment buildings of 16 floors each, were completed in 1962 and demolished by 2007. Chicago's infamous Cabrini-Green complex has also been mainly demolished, as have many other troubled housing projects across the nation.

To replace some of the units of these complexes, the Hope VI program was launched in the 1990s as the latest incarnation of public housing. Hope VI focuses on creating low-rise projects with a mixed-income group of tenants. Such projects are predicated on the theory that if higher-income families live in the same complexes as poor families, the successful tenants will set a good example for the less successful tenants. Perhaps so, but so far there is no evidence of this. It might be just as likely that the children of the dysfunctional families set bad examples for the children of the more successful families.

For a good explanation of this issue see Michelle Malkin’s article “Who Failed Chicago?” in Townhall.com.

We’ve actually been down this path before. There was a small sequester back in the mid-1980s, shortly after the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings law was enacted. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but the sequestration helped restrain the growth of spending and helped bring about a record amount of deficit reduction in 1987.

There was a similar (unsuccessful) fight in 1989. Here’s what then-Senator Bob Packwood of Oregon wrote in 1989.

“…the sequester has become the focus of partisan debate. Each side accuses the other of being responsible for “deep and arbitrary” budget cuts. Some legislators say we should do whatever it takes to cancel the sequester, even if it means higher taxes. While sequester is certainly not the ideal way to resolve this year’s budget dispute, there are reasons to believe that the fiscal discipline of a sequester is the medicine we need to cure the budget process. For all its drawbacks, a sequester is real deficit reduction. Instead of budget gimmicks, accounting tricks, phony cuts, and “revenue enhancements,” a sequester would reduce spending levels by a fixed percentage in eligible spending programs. In other words, unlike most deficit reduction packages, sequestration would actually reduce the deficit.”

The only argument against a sequester, at least among conservatives, is that a sequester would impose too much of a burden on the defense budget. But I’ve already explained in this post that the defense budget will climb by about $100 billion under sequestration.

I don’t know whether Republicans are the stupid party, but I know they will be very stupid if they don’t take the sequester and declare victory. I fact I would recommend going far beyond the sequester with its 2.5% cut and shoot for at least a 10% to 15% cut in the real budget — not a cut in the proposed increase like the game played by the politicians. If they cannot cut the programs I have listed they don’t deserve to manage so much as a child’s lemonade stand.

H/T to the Cato Institute

Killing Big Bird

“Today our problem is not making miracles--but managing miracles. We might well ponder a different question: What hath man wrought--and how will man use his inventions?” — Lyndon Johnson, Remarks Upon Signing the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, November 7, 1967.

I have a suggestion for Bill O’Reilly, the author of two bestselling books; Killing Lincoln and Killing Kennedy. He might consider another book with the title “Killing Big Bird.”

Having been routed in the first debate, President Obama has found a comeback strategy: Fly Big Bird. Specifically, mock Mitt Romney’s call to cut federal subsidies for the millionaires at the Sesame Workshop and pledge to defend the Public Broadcasting Service no matter how much money the Treasury has to borrow.

Apologizing for his disastrous performance in his first head-to-head debate with Mitt Romney, President Obama told a Hollywood fundraiser that the celebrities present “just perform flawlessly night after night. I can’t always say the same.” On his equally disastrous performance in office, the president admitted, “I goofed up.” But Romney, he joked, “is finally getting tough on Big Bird. Rounding him up. Elmo has got to watch out, too.”

Liberals in the media have tried to help the president out by amplifying this joke into a serious charge, raising the ante from rounding up Big Bird to killing him. CNN’s Soledad O’Brien said, “my son was devastated when he heard that Big Bird might be killed.”

This phony media driven dust up stems from an answer Mitt Romney gave moderator Jim Lehrer during last Wednesday’s presidential debate when he responded to a question regarding cutting federal programs:

“Okay, good. So I’ll get rid of that. I’m sorry, Jim, I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I’m going to stop other things. I like PBS. I love Big Bird. I actually like you, too. But I’m not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for it. That's number one.”

As Sherrie Westin, vice president of Sesame Workshop — which owns Sesame Street — had just explained to O’Brien, “The Sesame Workshop receives very, very little funding from PBS. So we are able to raise our funding through philanthropic, through our licensed product, which goes back into the educational programming, through corporate underwriting and sponsorship.

“So quite frankly, you know, you can debate whether or not there should be funding of Public Broadcasting but when they always sort of tout out Big Bird and say we’re going to kill Big Bird; that actually is misleading because ‘Sesame Street’ will be here.”

In fact, Romney never threatened to kill or even round up Big Bird. Pressed by Obama and moderator Jim Lehrer to identify federal spending he would cut, Romney repeated what he has been saying for a year: “I will eliminate all programs by this test: Is the program so critical it’s worth borrowing money from China to pay for it? And if not, I’ll get rid of it. ObamaCare’s on my list.”

Gently reminding the audience that, as a PBS employee, Lehrer was hardly a disinterested party, Romney said, “I’m sorry, Jim, I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I’m going to stop other things.” He added, “I like PBS. I love Big Bird. Actually, I like you, too. But I’m not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for it.”

As even the Huffington Post admits, ending taxpayer subsidies won’t kill Big Bird. HuffPo cites the manufacturer (outsourced to China) of Big Bird’s costumes to the effect that, “even if Romney kills PBS, Big Bird will survive ‘It’s a business, and a lucrative one.’”

That’s an understatement. Sesame Workshop made $46.9 million last year from licensing Big Bird and other Sesame Street characters on an astonishing variety of merchandise, from diapers to backpacks, from clothing to toys, from decor to accessories. HuffPo cites an analyst who estimates that Hasbro’s Fisher-Price division generates $70 to $75 million a year in revenue from “Sesame Street” toys alone.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds PBS (and NPR), reports its federal appropriations for 2013 as $445 million — up about 37 percent from $325 million in 2000. This corporate welfare for CPB may have been an indulgence we could afford in 2000, when the federal budget was running an $86 billion surplus. Today, with a deficit in excess of $1.3 trillion, it’s a luxury, and we must cut back. It’s a small cut, perhaps equivalent in a family budget to forgoing a single latte at Starbucks. But small cuts add up, and if we can’t cut corporate welfare, we can’t cut anything.

So Big Bird likes to maximize revenues and investment gains as much as the next Muppet. And now the President has made this adorable critter the symbol of federal programs that allegedly require eternal taxpayer aid, even if it has to be put on the future tax bill of today’s preschoolers. Is that funny?

On November 7, 1967 President Lyndon Johnson gave his remarks upon the signing of The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 as a part of his Great Society. In his remarks Johnson stated:

“It was in 1844 that Congress authorized $30,000 for the first telegraph line between Washington and Baltimore. Soon afterward, Samuel Morse sent a stream of dots and dashes over that line to a friend who was waiting. His message was brief and prophetic and it read: "What hath God wrought?"

Every one of us should feel the same awe and wonderment here today.

For today, miracles in communication are our daily routine. Every minute, billions of telegraph messages chatter around the world. Some are intercepted on ships. They interrupt law enforcement conferences and discussions of morality. Billions of signals rush over the ocean floor and fly above the clouds. Radio and television fill the air with sound. Satellites hurl messages thousands of miles in a matter of seconds.

Today our problem is not making miracles--but managing miracles. We might well ponder a different question: What hath man wrought--and how will man use his inventions?

The law that I will sign shortly offers one answer to that question.

It announces to the world that our Nation wants more than just material wealth; our Nation wants more than a "chicken in every pot." We in America have an appetite for excellence, too.

While we work every day to produce new goods and to create new wealth, we want most of all to enrich man's spirit. That is the purpose of this act.

It will give a wider and, I think, stronger voice to educational radio and television by providing new funds for broadcast facilities.

It will launch a major study of television's use in the Nation's classrooms and their potential use throughout the world.

Finally--and most important--it builds a new institution: the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

….

Yes, the student in a small college tapping the resources of the greatest university in the hemisphere.

--the country doctor getting help from a distant laboratory or a teaching hospital;

--a scholar in Atlanta might draw instantly on a library in New York;

--a famous teacher could reach with ideas and inspirations into some far-off classroom, so that no child need be neglected. Eventually, I think this electronic knowledge bank could be as valuable as the Federal Reserve Bank.

And such a system could involve other nations, too--it could involve them in a partnership to share knowledge and to thus enrich all mankind.

A wild and visionary idea? Not at all. Yesterday's strangest dreams are today's headlines and change is getting swifter every moment.”

Public broadcasting is the deathless government program par excellence. It may have made some sense a few generations ago, when there were in effect three broadcast television stations, limited radio offerings, and enormous regulatory and economic barriers standing in the way of new market entrants. But that no longer is the case: Anybody with a few thousand dollars and an Internet connection can launch a television series or a radio program today and reach an audience of millions. We have more television stations than we can watch, more radio stations than we can listen to, and instantaneous connections to most of the world’s media. In fact, we could multiply public broadcasting expenditures a hundredfold and do practically nothing to improve on the already vast richness of our media environment. Firing Line is a beloved memory, but in 2012 such programming would not require a public-broadcasting infrastructure to thrive. If PBS doesn’t do it, 10 million others will. As radio talker Mark Levine has stated many times he has a group of investors lined up ready to purchase Sesame Street and run it on cable TV and the Internet. His financial advisors have told him they could “make millions” from the deal.

Outside of the popular Sesame Street what else does PBS offer for the money we give it that is not available for free on other channels such as History, National Geographic, and Discovery?

And while PBS and NPR give very little offense beyond their bland, conventional liberalism, the United States is not the sort of country that should have government-run media — or even media that is only 6 percent government run. Public broadcasting, like so much associated with the progressive heyday, is fundamentally un-republican. Nowhere in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution is Congress empowered to grant monies to a media or broadcast outlet — even if you stretch the clause; “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;” to its absolute absurdity.

The increasingly infantile Obama campaign has been clinging to Big Bird as a life preserver ever since Mitt Romney destroyed the incumbent President in the first presidential debate. You can’t get a straight story about Libya from Barack Obama. We still don’t know where all his “stimulus” money went. In a few weeks, we’ll find out if the bizarre “good jobs report” that claimed 800,000 jobs appeared out of thin air in a recessionary economy was just a statistical blip. Vital documents pertaining to the deadly Fast and Furious scandal remain protected by executive privilege. But Obama will talk about Muppets all day long.

Now the Obama campaign has produced a TV ad using Big Bird – not just a lookalike or a shadowy figure, but the character himself, who even speaks during the ad – to assail Mitt Romney for daring to suggest he would cut PBS funding during the debate.

I’m sure the huge number of parents angry about what Barack Obama has done to their country would like to know if this was a fully authorized use of the Big Bird character, before they make Christmas shopping decisions this year. Maybe Obama could sell Muppets branded with his logo in his web store – you know, the part of his website that does verify the identity of credit card holders, unlike his donation page.

As strategic miscalculations go, the ad is pretty devastating because it answers the big question that emerged from wreckage of last week’s miserable performance: Why was Obama’s performance so bad? The Big Bird ad seems to suggest that the Obama campaign was unable to respond to Romney’s aggressive critiques simply because there’s no substance to their campaign. They don’t know what they’re fighting for, as opposed to calling Romney a liar and grasping at Romney’s claim that making taxpayers pay for an extremely profitable children’s television show might not be necessary in an era where America owes trillions. By contrast, since the debate Romney’s embraced big themes and made a major foreign policy address. This is exactly the “small ball” politicking that made the Romney campaign the source of press derision for so long. Now Romney has flipped the script.

As an update the production company behind Sesame Street is asking political campaigns to refrain from using their characters in campaign ads — including an Obama campaign ad that uses Big Bird.

"Sesame Workshop is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization and we do not endorse candidates or participate in political campaigns. We have approved no campaign ads, and as is our general practice, have requested that the ad be taken down," the company said in a Tuesday statement.

In the very best postmodern fashion, Obama and his supporters have relied on a narrative about Obama that has been carefully constructed. He’s brilliant, a great writer, a rare thinker, a moderate, a first-class temperament with neatly pressed pants, a uniter, a cool guy who’s unflappable.

The first debate last Wednesday threatened to make that narrative seem absurd. You might say that the narrative got mugged by reality, and an awful lot of people were watching while it happened.

But the next day there was a new narrative in place — or rather, several narratives, all rooted in cognitive dissonance: Romney cheated, the altitude was too high for Obama, he didn’t have time to practice because he was too busy with weighty matters, Romney lied, and look at those great unemployment numbers!

Those numbers themselves are another narrative, one that no one can quite figure out because there’s a disparity between one part of the stats and other parts. In a very real sense, the numbers don’t seem to add up. But they’re good for the Obama narrative, unless you think too deeply about them.

But one of the points of a narrative is not to think too deeply about it.

Now in a sense every candidate spins a narrative about him/herself, and the media spins a narrative of its own which is either in agreement or disagreement with that candidate’s preferred narrative. But Barack Obama is the first presidential candidate I can think of — be they liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, someone I have liked and supported or someone I have detested and opposed — who is nearly all about the narrative, and who seems so aware of it As Hot Air points out Obama actually believes he won the debate.