Having spent a good portion of my life in the infantry, a true melting pot of races, I never saw racism nor the toxic effects of the left's racial politics until I left the military and entered civilian life. We were brothers and sisters in arms and all Americans. Nothing so perfectly captures that as this video of a retired MSG during the Baltimore riots.
The attitude displayed by that man is pervasive throughout the military. There is no victim group mentality among minorities in the military. Tragically, the same cannot be said of our nation outside the military. Blacks in the civilian world are fed a steady diet of propaganda that they are victims of pervasive racism in this country and that any problems common to their group are all as a result of external racism. They are literally programmed to view everything in life through the lens of their skin color and to interpret anything negative that occurs to be the result of external racism. It is a deeply distorted, toxic vision of life.
A Facebook friend of mine just set the above image as his profile cover photo. He’s an activist in the Black Lives Matter movement whom I became acquainted with while working on an election issue in my state.
I look at this picture, and the first thing I think is: Wow. That’s… that’s really offensive.
Then I look at it some more. I think about it. Then I realize that for some people, like my Facebook friend, this accurately represents how they perceive the world in which they live.
We can criticize that. We can tell them that they are wrong to view the world that way. We can insist that things aren’t as bad as an image like this makes them out to be. And we may be right. But maybe we should stop and consider how terrifying life has to get for this to become your perception.
What do we do with that? How can we have anything approaching a productive conversation about race relations and criminal justice issues when starting from such divergent perceptions of the status quo?
What do we do indeed. The left's message, that racism is pervasive in America and the single major problem blacks face in this country is believed throughout, it would seem, much of the blacks in this nation at every socioeconomic level.
Exhibit No. Two is Michelle Obama. She is a woman who sees racism in innocent events and ready to claim racism at the drop of a hat. Indeed, as Ian Tuttle points out, for Ms. Obama, and indeed, for all of the left's victim's groups, the mere feeling of alienation is taken as proof positive of it's reality. In Ms. Obama's case, racism exists because she subjectively feels it, irrespective of reality.
Michelle Obama has led a charmed life, from attending Princeton and then Harvard Law to a successful career and now to First Lady. Racism has not held this woman back. And yet, in giving the Commencement Address to Tuskesgee University last weekend, she spoke of how hard her life has been having to endure racist sleights. It was astounding.
. . . [T]he Boston Globe reported some of the tweets: "why is white america so reluctant to identify white college males as a problem population?" and "every MLK week i commit myself to not spending a dime in white-owned businesses. and every year i find it nearly impossible."
This is yet another woman who has apparently not been held back by racism, yet she sees all white males as a "problem?" Not merely is Ms. Grundy's philosophy abhorrent and insane, it is equally as abhorrent and insane that Boston University fully intends to employ this women to teach at the institution.
The left's goal is to keep America balkanized. They are certainly succeeding. And while the extinguishment of racism on any sort of appreciable scale in this country has seen significant portion of blacks in this country advance into the upper and middle class, there is a large substrata of blacks that have not:
By virtually every metric, while the lives of blacks have improved, and while many black individuals have been able to embrace the opportunities this country has to offer, a very substantial portion of blacks have not. It is obscene that, in America, some 25% of blacks live in poverty. It is obscene that, where in 1965, less than 30% of black children were born into a single parent family,that number is now over 70%. It is obscene that that 30 to 40 percent of inner city kids don’t graduate from school, and a very substantial number who do graduate are functionally illiterate. It is obscene that blacks are seven times more likely to commit violent crime than other races. And it is obscene that these problems are cyclical. Nothing the left has done for blacks has broken this cycle, and it all portends to get much worse as cities, where large numbers of blacks congregate and many of whom take public sector jobs, fall into bankruptcy and economic chaos from the failure of the blue political / economic model.
As toxic as the fruit of race hustling is on the left to keep blacks balkanized and feeling victimized by racism, the penultimate cost of that effort is being paid first and foremost by blacks themselves. And for every black in the civilian world that climbs into the middle or upper class, one has to wonder how many are held back nursing grievance politics instead of focusing on the opportunities available to them.
When the blacks rioted in Baltimore last month, doing millions of dollars in damage to the businesses and stores that serve their neighborhoods, they were acting out over perceived racial conflict with the police that led to the death of Freddie Gray. To put that into perspective, there are a host of problems affecting blacks in inner city Baltimore, from poverty to unemployment to single parent homes and high crime. Freddie Gray was one of 87 homicides having occurred in Baltimore City already this year. The reality is that a black living in Baltimore City has exponentially more to fear from other blacks than they ever have to fear from the police. Yet none of these other homicides send people out into the street or raise the community in arms to try and stop this devastation in their communities. It is only because blacks are fed a steady diet of victimhood and grievance politics that they are primed to riot, rather than address the real problems they face.
We'll give the last word to a man living in "the hood," as he describes it, Mr. Eric Thomas:
Is it time for some good old fashioned violence yet? Is it time to start getting attention by meeting false charges of racism with fists and feet? That is my conundrum. I doubt many conservatives will agree with me, but I think that it is.
I am livid at this point of being falsely accused of racism as a conservative, and in equal measure, I am infuriated at the left's treatment of any minority who dare not tow the progressive line. And there is no more scurrilous example of that than a recent NYT editorial by Univ. of Penn. political science Prof. (tenured, no doubt) Adolph L. Reed Jr.
Reed uses his poison pen to comment on the decision of South Carolina's first female governor - and the nation's first Indian American governor - Nikki Haley's decision to appoint black Republican Rep. Tim Scott to take over the Senate seat of tea party hero Jim DeMint. Sen. DeMint lobbied for the appointment of Scott because both share the same conservative ideology. Scott, a self made man and a darling of the tea party, was elected to Congress in a majority white district in SC over two white opponents, one of whom was the son of former SC Senator, Strom Thurmond.
According to Reed, while the appointment of Scott "seemed like another milestone for African-Americans," the reality is that "modern black Republicans" are "more tokens than signs of progress." As Reed later makes explicit, all minority conservatives, like Gov. Nikki Haley herself, were elected simply because "Republicans don’t want to have to think of themselves, or be thought of by others, as racist." Thus, when a Republican pulls the lever for a minority it is merely a psychological defense mechanism to hide their own rampant racism from themselves. And indeed, Prof Reed later asserts that the Tea Party itself is a cauldron of "thinly veiled racism."
All of which leads to the question, just how in the world does Prof. Reed define "racism?" He has an incredibly simple litmus test, one that has nothing to do with intolerance based in whole or part on the melanin content of one's skin - you know, actual racism. Instead, Prof. Reed defines racism as failing to support progressive policies nominally labeled as helping blacks. This is unconscionable.
The real travesty, of course, is that the left has been able to so mislead blacks with their false claims of racism. In any rational world, every single black American would have pulled the lever against Obama, a President who has overseen the single greatest economic decimation of blacks since WWII. They would not vote for a party that puts teachers union interests far ahead of the education of their children. They would not vote for a party whose commitment to the welfare state has done nothing positive for blacks, and indeed, has been one of the prime drivers in tearing apart the black family unit. They would not vote for a party that promises them a few handouts, but does not promise them jobs and advancement. The plight of far too many blacks in America today is an inexcusable and unnecessary tragedy.
A last special mention needs to be made of Prof. Reed's incredibly intellectually dishonest effort to suggest that South Carolina is itself a hotbed of racism. Reed notes that the state is (present tense) "home to white supremacists like John C. Calhoun, Preston S. Brooks, Ben Tillman and Strom Thurmond." That is beyond the pale. Calhoun, Brooks and Preston were Democrats who lived and died over a century ago. The late Strom Thurmond was a Senator who started his career as a segregationist Democrat before altering his view of race in Ameica post-1970. This would be akin to me noting that the left is the ideological home of Marx, Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, in addition to noting that the last member of both the KKK and the U.S. Senate was Democrat WV Senator Robert Byrd. Arguably, none of those individuals define the left in the U.S. today, just as none of the individuals Reed sites mean that racism is rampant in SC today. Prof. Reed is simply despicable.
It really is time to stop accepting these false and scurrilous charges of racism. It is past time to meet such charges with a measured, rational response. It should be obvious that, after 50 years of the left using this tactic to effectively distort our politics, such responses are useless. It is time to treat such charges the same way I would expect blacks to react at being called "niggers." It should be met with seething anger and, where appropriate, violence. C'mon, who wouldn't want to see Prof. Reed on his knees cupping his recently kicked balls, or even better, Chris Matthews trying to clean his bloody nose and dust himself off as he got up off the floor.
Stacey Dash is a gorgeous 46 year old actress, she is be black, and she recently tweeted that she supported Mitt Romney in the upcoming election. Progressives on the left have predictably reacted with all of the anger, hatred and vitriol of an Islamic mob in Cairo who just heard that, somewhere in the U.S., someone criticized their prophet. There is zero tolerance among progressives for any black who strays off the plantation.
Ms. Dash justified her decision to support Romney by using the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. - that she chose Romney over Obama "not based on the color of his skin, but the content of his character." My hat is off to her both for her courage in coming forward and her grasp of the ideals of Martin Luther King, Jr, ideals every American should support.
In the video below, Ms. Dash discusses the hatred and vitriol that has been directed at her since she announced her support of Mitt Romney. She also notes that Paul Ryan called her to thank her for her support.
Imagine if the KKK were acceptable in polite company. Imagine if the KKK made regular appearances on your television, compliments of a press that viewed them uncritically. Imagine if cable carried KKK-TV. Imagine if the message of the KKK was repeated daily to the people of America. What if there were KKK studies at every major university where their message of racism was taught, contemplated, and made the subject of acceptable academic discourse. Do you think that white racism would be endemic today? Of course.
So what would happen if the roles were reversed?
Well, in fact, they are.
The NAACP calls the Tea Party racist. The Congressional Black Caucus claims to have been subject to repeated acts of racism in March by the Tea Party - something that even the NYT now acknowledges is false. Rev. Jeremiah Wright preaches Black Liberation Theology, an ideology premised on the belief that whites are the enemy and racism in America is pervaisive. When the worst act of violence on our soil hit home on 9-11, Wright called the violence justified as "America's chickens coming home to roost." Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, has been even more vociferous than Wright in pushing these same canards. Indeed, he preaches a degree of racism and vitriol every bit as toxic as that of the KKK. The Nation of Islam is also a major player in prison ministries. Then there is King Samir Shabazz, the leader of the New Black Panther Party, who, when he isn't trying to intimidate voters at Phillidelphia polling stations is advocating the murder of "cracker babies."
In academia, some of the most brilliant black minds teach Critical Race Theory, a belief system that racism is eternal and pervaisive. Others teach that all white Americans alive today are responsible for slavery and oppression that occurred before they were even born. These same academics teach that whites owe the black community penance for their sins in the form of reparations.
Jesse Jackson, a man who makes his millions throwing the race card with wild abandon, wants a new "black national anthem." Al Sharpton, well, he's a class unto himself. If you have not read the bloody history of this race baiter, do see this now decade old column by Katherine Jean Lopez. (H/T Soccer Dad)
The bottom line, what appears to be at least a substantial minority of blacks are taught to view the world through an entirely racial lens. If something happens that they do not like, than it must be racism. It promotes a lack of personal responsibility, mis-placed anger, simmering hatred and a deep-seated sense of grievance. It is toxic.
At best, this leads to massive and daily distortions in our society. At worst, predictably, it leads to violence. Though the reality of racial grievance as a motivating factor in black violence is studiously ignored by the press, it has shown up in some very high profile cases. The first time I noticed it was in the Virginia sniper case. No one seem concerned that it was The Nation of Islam that inspired the snipers John Muhammed and Lee Malvo. No MSM outlet that I am aware of paid any serious attention to the role of the toxic teaching of the Louis Farrakhan in that incident, though it certainly was not hidden in the testimony at trial. This from a local NBC affiliate reporting on the trial in 2006:
Muhammad trained Malvo in weapons, kept him on a rigorous diet that allowed only one meal each day, and introduced him to the teachings of the Nation of Islam, Malvo said. Muhammad hated America and thought white people were "the devil." . . .
Recently, in Knoxville during one of the trials for the subhuman acts of rape, torture and murder of Christopher Newsom and Channon Christian, two white UT students, perpetrated by a gang of four black men, one of the witnesses testified that one of the defendants was "Muslim and hated white people." Whether that hatred was a motivating factor in this crime - a crime itself studiously ignored by the MSM - I do not know. But it would seem likely based on the above testimony.
And now today, there is the following on the motivations of the black man who, the other day, killed eight people where he worked until being terminated for theft:
A black man who went on a shooting rampage at a beer distributor calmly told a 911 operator that it was "a racist place" and that he "handled the problem" but wished he had shot more people.
Omar Thornton called 911 after shooting 10 co-workers - eight fatally - on Tuesday morning at Hartford Distributors Inc. He introduced himself as "the shooter over in Manchester" and said he was hiding in the building, but he would not say where.
"You probably want to know the reason why I shot this place up," he said, his voice steady. "This place is a racist place. They're treating me bad over here. And treat all other black employees bad over here, too. So I took it to my own hands and handled the problem. I wish I could have got more of the people."
Connecticut State Police released the audio of the four-minute 911 call on Thursday, the day company and union officials rebutted suggestions that the company had ignored Thornton's complaints of racism.
Thornton, 34, went on his rampage moments after he was forced to resign when confronted with video evidence that he had been stealing and reselling beer.
The 911 call confirmed suggestions from his relatives and girlfriend that he believed he was avenging racist treatment in the workplace.
Hartford Distributors president Ross Hollander said there was no record to support claims of "racial insensitivity" made through the company's anti-harassment policy, the union grievance process or state and federal agencies.
"Nonetheless, these ugly allegations have been raised and the company will cooperate with any investigation," Hollander said.
The union said 14 of 69 dock workers, or 20 percent, were racial minorities - four black, nine Hispanic, one Asian.
The idea that Thornton's motive may not have been retaliation for losing his job has not sat well with many of the people who knew the victims and have firsthand knowledge of the environment inside the enormous distribution center in Manchester.
"Everybody just thinks this race card is such a wrong thing," said Michael Cirigliano, whose slain brother, Bryan, was Thornton's union representative at the disciplinary meeting and the president of the local union.
Michael Cirigliano also spent three decades working at the warehouse before he retired two years ago.
"The Hispanics and the blacks were telling me they've never seen anything they're accusing the company of in the bathrooms or anywhere else at HDI," he said. "It's never been separated white, black, Asian. It's never been like that."
He said the company had increased its hiring of minorities in recent years.
"They've been bringing in more and more minority people to fill the positions," Cirigliano said. "You could almost go as far as that's reverse discrimination. They were hiring the groups to balance the workplace, because that's what we are in America, there's a balance."
Anthony Napolitano, the son-in-law of victim Victor James, 60, of Windsor, said James treated everyone equally, regardless of race or religion.
Truck driver David Zylberman, a 34-year employee of the company, said that the racism claims "pissed me off because they were good people."
Thornton's ex-girlfriend, Jessica Anne Brocuglio, told The Associated Press on Thursday that he had a history of racial problems with co-workers at other jobs and believed he was denied pay raises because of his race. . . .
Nine people dead because of a black man who saw everything bad that happened to him through the prism of race. That act, like the Virginia snipers and possibly the Newsom-Christian murders noted above, are the extreme but wholly foreseeable results of those who preach racism as their meal ticket.
So this is where I think we are . . .
It is long past time that we on the right start demanding an end to the hatred and reverse racism that pervades and is accepted by so many on the left.
It is long past time for we on the right to stop accepting uncritically the teaching of Critical Race theory and similar canards in our colleges and universities.
It is long past time that we allow people like Rev. Wright and Louis Farrakhan to exist in America without demanding that everyone, blacks and whites alike, denounce them utterly and fully to the point that they are not tolerated on the left or the right.
It is long past time for the MSM be held to account for reporting unsubstantiated claims of racism.
And, I think, it is now time for an end to affirmative action and the use of disparate impact to persecute companies and people for racism where none actually exists.
Bernard Chapin wrote a few days ago, "racial blindness is a conservative thing." It is true. But it is not enough. Conservatives need to demand equality for minorities and condemn racism whenever and whereever it is found. But equally, it is time to vociferously demand the same from the press and from minorities. The current situation is untennable and immoral.
Ousted USDA employee Shirley Sherrod says she will sue conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, the Associated Press reports.
Sherrod made the announcement Thursday in San Diego at the National Association of Black Journalists annual convention.
Breitbart posted a heavily edited video of Sherrod on his website, BigGovernment.com, speaking to an NAACP group and appearing to admit that she had deliberately refrained from giving full assistance to a farmer because he was white.
She is referred to on the site as a "racist govt employee."
The political fallout from the posting prompted the Agriculture Department to force Sherrod to resign. . . .
In the clip, Sherrod admits to an act of reverse racism. Her damages will be deminimis, as she was immediately offered a better job by her employer at USDA. She has had more than ample opportunity to appear on the press to rebut charges of racism. So it would seem that the goal of this litigation is simply to try and punish Breitbart. It also means that her entire life will become open season during discovery.
I don't know much about Shirley Sherrod beyond the events of the past week. That said, during the past week, her reaction since the firing has been incendiary. She has, on several occasions this week, thrown around her own accusations of racism, including an allegation that Breitbart wants to bring back slavery. She has raised charges of racism at the USDA not to mention Fox News. I suspect we will find Ms. Sherrod has a history of race baiting.
There should be many "teachable moments" indeed. Pass the popcorn.
At the WSJ, Democratic pollsters Patrick Caddell and Douglas Shoen take stock of Obama's performance after eighteen months, concluding the obvious - that Obama has been the most divisive President in living memory. This from their commentary in the WSJ:
. . . Mr. Obama has divided America on the basis of race, class and partisanship. Moreover, his cynical approach to governance has encouraged his allies to pursue a similar strategy of racially divisive politics on his behalf.
. . . By dividing America, Mr. Obama has brought our government to the brink of a crisis of legitimacy, compromising our ability to address our most important policy issues.
We say this with a heavy heart. Both of us share the president's stated vision of what America can and should be. The struggle for equal rights has animated both of our lives. Both of us were forged politically during the crucible of the civil rights movement. Having worked in the South during the civil rights movement, and on behalf of the ground-breaking elections of African-American mayors such as David Dinkins, Harold Washington and Emanuel Cleaver, we were deeply moved by Mr. Obama's election.
The first hint that as president Mr. Obama would be willing to interject race into the political dialogue came last July, when he jumped to conclusions about the confrontation between Harvard Prof. Henry Louis "Skip" Gates and the Cambridge police.
During a press conference, the president said that the "Cambridge police acted stupidly," and he went on to link the arrest with the "long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately."
In truth, the Gates incident appears to have had nothing to do with race—a Cambridge review committee that investigated the incident ruled on June 30 that there was fault on both sides.
Sen. Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.) has said the president told him in a closed-door meeting that he would not move to secure the border with Mexico unless and until Congress reached a breakthrough on comprehensive immigration reform. That's another indication Mr. Obama is willing to continue to play politics with hot-button issues.
Add in the lawsuit against the Arizona immigration law and it's clear the Obama administration is willing to run the risk of dividing the American people along racial and ethnic lines to mobilize its supporters—particularly Hispanic voters, whose backing it needs in the fall midterm elections and beyond.
As the Washington Post reported last week, two top White House strategists, speaking on condition of anonymity, have indicated that "the White House plans to use the immigration debate to punish the GOP and aggressively seek the Latino vote in 2012."
On an issue that has gotten much less attention, but is potentially just as divisive, the Justice Department has pointedly refused to prosecute three members of the New Black Panther Party for voter intimidation at the polls on Election Day 2008.
It is the job of the Department of Justice to protect all American voters from voter discrimination and voter intimidation—whether committed by the far right, the far left, or the New Black Panthers. It is unacceptable for the Department of Justice to continue to stonewall on this issue.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Mr. Obama's campaign emphasized repeatedly that his minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was being unfairly stereotyped because of racially incendiary sound bites that allegedly did not reflect the totality of his views. In the Gates incident and others, Mr. Obama has resorted to similar forms of stereotyping.
Even the former head of the Civil Rights Commission, Mary Frances Berry, acknowledged that the Obama administration has taken to polarizing America around the issue of race as a means of diverting attention away from other issues, saying: "the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. . . . Having one's opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness."
The president had a unique opportunity to focus on overarching issues of importance to whites and blacks. He has failed to address the critical challenges. He has not used his bully pulpit to emphasize the importance of racial unity and the common interest of poor whites and blacks who need training, job opportunities, and the possibility of realizing the American Dream. He hasn't done enough to address youth unemployment—which in the white community is 23.2% and in the black community is 39.9%.
Mr. Obama has also cynically divided the country on class lines. He has taken to playing the populist card time and time again. He bashes Wall Street and insurance companies whenever convenient to advance his programs, yet he has been eager to accept campaign contributions and negotiate with these very same banks and corporations behind closed doors in order to advance his political agenda.
Finally, President Obama also exacerbated partisan division, and he has made it clear that he intends to demonize the Republicans and former President George W. Bush in the fall campaign. In April, the Democratic National Committee released a video in which the president directly addressed his divide-and-conquer campaign strategy, with an appeal to: "young people, African-Americans, Latinos, and women who powered our victory in 2008 [to] stand together once again."
President Obama's divisive approach to governance has weakened us as a people and paralyzed our political culture. Meanwhile, the Republican leadership has failed to put forth an agenda that is more positive, unifying or inclusive. We are stronger when we debate issues and purpose, and we are all weaker when we divide by race and class. We will pay a price for this type of politics.
Thomas Sowell, in his recent essay, "Race Card Fraud," takes the left to task for using unfounded charges of racism for political purposes. Equally, he takes Obama to task for merely promising to lead us to some new "post-racial" America while, in actuality, leading us in another direction. As Sowell opines:
. . . Among people who voted for Barack Obama in 2008, those who are likely to be most disappointed are those who thought that they were voting for a new post-racial era. There was absolutely nothing in Obama’s past to lead to any such expectation, and much to suggest the exact opposite. But the man’s rhetoric and demeanor during the election campaign enabled this and many other illusions to flourish.
Still, it was an honest mistake of the kind that decent people have often made when dealing with people whose agendas are not constrained by decency, but only by what they think they can get away with. . . .
Racial issues are more of the same. You want a government where all citizens are treated alike, regardless of race or ethnicity? Obama will say that. Then he will advocate appointing judges with “empathy” for particular segments of the population, such as racial minorities. “Empathy” is just a pretty word for the ugly reality of bias.
Obama’s first nomination of a Supreme Court justice was a classic example of someone with empathy for some racial groups, but not others. As a Circuit Court judge, Sonia Sotomayor voted to dismiss a case involving white firefighters who had been denied the promotions for which they qualified, because not enough blacks or Hispanics passed the same test that they did.
A fellow Hispanic judge protested the way the white firefighters’ case was dismissed, rather than adjudicated. Moreover, the Supreme Court not only took the case, it ruled in favor of the firefighters.
Obama’s injecting himself into a local police matter in Massachusetts, despite admitting that he didn’t know the facts, to say that a white policeman was in the wrong in arresting a black professor who was a friend of Obama, was more of the same. So is Obama’s Justice Department overlooking blatant voter intimidation by thugs who happen to be black.
There is not now, nor has there ever been, anything post-racial about Barack Obama, except for the people who voted for him in the mistaken belief that he shared their desire to be post-racial. When he leaves office, especially if it is after one term, he will leave this country more racially polarized than before.
Hopefully, he may also leave the voters wiser, though sadder, after they learn from painful experience that you can’t judge politicians by their rhetoric, or ignore their past because of your hopes for the future. Voters may even wise up to race-card fraud.
This is one of those rare occasions when I think Dr. Sowell may be wrong. I think Obama may in fact - wholly inadvertently - take us down the road to a post-racial America. And I think it may well be because Middle America is very quickly wising up to race-card fraud.
Decades ago, the vast majority of people in post WWII America signed up for the equality of all races and genders. Admittedly, Southern Democrats were forced to sign on the dotted line at the point of a gun, particularly in Little Rock, but in the end, they did. Equality in America didn't happen overnight, nor did it happen without bloodshed, but, as Dennis Prager recently pointed out, America is today "the least racist country in the world." And indeed, while racism will occasionally show its ugly face, and while some remnant of racism will always exist on the far fringes of our nation amongst all races, it is not tolerated in the least in the mainstream.
Since the Civil Rights movement won out half a half century ago, the minority population of America, particularly the black population, has evolved into roughly three groups. The largest group has joined the middle class and embraced the gifts America has to offer. They are us, they are our friends and neighbors, our employees and employers, our family members, and in any and all cases, our fellow Americans. A second group has fully embraced the left's classification of them as victims. These people are the Al Sharptons, Jesse Jacksons, Jeremiah Wrights and Henry Louis Gates's of our country as well as their followers. They live for, and make a living on, the left's utterly distorting fantasy that racism (or whatever -ism) is rampant throughout America. Many occupy positions in academia, teaching the utter canard of critical race theory and loudly demanding reparations based on a very selective and highly myopic view of history. Yet others preach a gospel of separatism and reverse racism under the guises of Islam and Black Liberation Theology. And lastly are those many blacks still mired in poverty in the inner cities. They are approximately 25% of the black population. This is an intractable problem that the far left, despite all of their claims to the contrary, is not seriously interested in solving. It is important to understand how we, as a nation, got to where we are today. The far left, in the 1960's, following the death of Martin Luther King, co-opted the Civil Rights movement as their rasion d'etre and married it with their own politics of Karl Marx. No longer was the Civil Rights movement about equality. Instead, people were categorized into permanent victim classes entitled to special treatment. While equality and an end to racism in America remained the ostensible goals of the movement, they were in reality replaced by the goals of reworking society into a socialist utopia and, above all, attaining money and political power.
This movement, devoid of intellectual honesty and moraly bankrupt, had only one real weapon in its inventory - the race card. Any criticism of a member of a victim class for virtually any reason was recast by the far left as a racial attack. The far left and newly minted "civil rights leaders" quickly learned to use the race card to circumvent debate and demonize political opponents. And, of course, they waged brutal attacks against any "victims" in the public square who did not embrace their victimhood. It has been an incredibly effective weapon for the far left over the past four decades. That is because the generation that came of age as the Civil Rights movement reached its zenith in the 1960's carried with them the collective guilt of large scale racism and sexism in America.
But the people of age today are a different generation. They grew up in a time when the Civil Rights movement was ascendant. They are blacks, whites, hispanics, asians and others who interact freely. These people today are not racist or sexist. In the case of whites, they do not feel the collective guilt of their progenitors. In the case of minorities, they do not hold hatred and nurse the distant historic wounds the left would have them nurture. And as to all of this generation, whether or not they voted for Obama in 2008, all accepted the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency irrespective of the color of his skin.
While Middle America signed on for equality a half century ago, they did not sign up to be subject to reverse racism, or to have their voices delegitimized by false charges of racism, or to tolerate unequal enforcement of the law, or in the case of minorities themselves, to be ruthlessly demonized on racist or sexist grounds for daring not to accept their status as victims. That said, for the past four decades, Middle America has virtually ignored what was going on in the rotting underbelly of the left's world of permanent victims.
All that changed during the Presidential campaign of 2008 with the shocking revelation that Obama's pastor of two decades, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was a rabid racist and anti-semite who reveled in anti-Americanism.
It further changed as America watched the left's brutal, sexist war on Sarah Palin. The blinds were pulled aside on the utter rot at the core of the left. The left won the battles - the MSM pushed Wright out of the news as quickly as possible and they succeeded in demonizing the self-made woman who is Palin. But it is clear now that the window into the rot of the underbelly of the left exposed during the campaign was not forgotten by Middle America, merely filed away.
During the eighteen months since the Obama administration came to power, much more evidence of that rot has surfaced. It started on election day with the New Black Panthers. A few months later, Eric Holder outrageously called all of America “cowards” on the issue of race. Then there was the incident with Henry Louis Gates and Obama's support for Gates. Not long after, Obama's DOJ dropped the charges against the New Black Panthers in what seemed an act inexplicable on any grounds but racial favoritism. Moreover, Obama's DOJ decided it was above the law and refused to answer lawful subpoenas on the matter. Then just recently came the deeply troubling allegations that Obama's DOJ is refusing to apply all voting laws equally to all races. Add to that Obama and the left's push to add yet more racial preferences and quotas into our laws. You can find numerous other racially charged incidents perpetrated by the Obama administration and the left catalgoued in an article by David Limbaugh in the Washington Examiner.
All of that has been important in calling into question the validity of the race card. But the single most important factor has been the rise of the Tea Party movement and the left's efforts to destroy it.
Critically, the Tea Party is a grass roots movement thoroughly anchored in Middle America. It is a decentralized, amorphous movement that opposes Obama and the left on purely ideological grounds. There is no one Tea Party leader for the left to demonize. So instead, the left has relentlessly and falsely attempted to demonize and delegitimize the entire Tea Party movement as racist. It is a move of tactical brilliance worthy of Gen. George Armstrong Custer. The left has managed to personalize their race wars for a huge swath of America that long ago embraced the concept of equality.
Perhaps the stupidest thing that the left could have done was manufacture false incidents of racism. But that is precisely what happened when, during the vote on Obamacare, members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) marched through the Tea Party protesters on Capitol Hill in a blatant effort to solicit racist taunts. When none were forthcoming, Rep. Clyburn and others made them up. The problem for the CBC - everyone and his brother, including Jesse Jackson, Jr., was taping the protests that day, in addition to taping every single step of the CBC march. Not a single instance of anything racial was caught on tape, despite offers of rewards of $100,000 by Andrew Breitbart for such proof.
Then to add more fuel to the fire the left has lit at its own feet, last week, the NAACP voted to smear the Tea Party, citing the discredited CBC allegations of racism as justification. Moreover, the First Lady, Michelle Obama, appeared at the NAACP's convention and gave a speech on the eve of the NAACP's well publicized vote. The First Lady did not join in the NAACP's slander, but she did not need to. She gave legitimacy and the blessing of the White House by appearing before the NAACP as their keynote speaker on the eve of their vote.
In the long term, the sum of all this spells doom for the far left. Their entire power base is centered on the twin pillars of maintaining victim classes and mining white guilt. But their device is laid bare and the guilt is dwindling to nothingness. It is happening before our eyes.
White support for Obama is melting away like a candle lit at both ends and in the middle. All of this despite the repeated use of the race card to delegitimize Obama's grass roots opposition. Ten years ago this ploy of the left would have worked. But despite the best efforts of today's MSM, it is sputtering and failing.
Today, with the race card no longer working for them as it has in the past, the left and their MSM cheerleaders are scared indeed. You can see it in the headlines. You can see it in the days events.
Just yesterday, the headline on Drudge was “Race Mess.” Articles are appearing among the MSM decrying the rise of “racial tension” in America and, in essence, telling Middle America to get back in line. Typical is the Reuters article of yesterday, "Race issues beset Obama's "post-racial" presidency.” The authors detail this new racial tension, then quote Paul Krugman and other similar left wing "experts" on the issues. Krugman, weighing in on the allegations of racially motivated unequal application of the laws, helpfully tells the reader that:
"When the right-wing noise machine starts promoting another alleged scandal, you shouldn't suspect that it's fake -- you should presume that it's fake, until further evidence becomes available," columnist Paul Krugman wrote in The New York Times.
And if that were insufficient, Reuters tries to shift part of the blame for this “racial tension” onto the right:
Both the right and left accuse each other of injecting race into the political discourse. Experts say that's inevitable given Obama's position as the first non-white U.S. president. Obama's father was Kenyan and his mother a white American.
That is pure bull of course. Nothing Middle America did over the past two years injected “race” into the political discourse. What racial tension there is today wholly derives from acts of the left and the left's increasingly shrill and desperate cries of racism. What is different now is that, for the first time, Middle America is pushing back.
Politico adds an additional spin to this story, attributing this new “racial tension” in America to Fox News and MSNBC:
The America of 2010 is dominated by racial images out of farce and parody, caricatures not seen since the glory days of Shaft. Fox News often stars a leather-clad New Black Panther, while MSNBC scours the tea party movement for racist elements, which one could probably find in any mass organization in America.
This is moral equivalency at its worst. The acts of Fox News are in no way equivalent to those of MSNBC. Fox News is reporting on a blatant violation of the voting rights act that there is strong reason to believe was dropped by the Dept. of Justice as part of a larger, unlawful and racially motivated refusal to enforce laws equally. That is an incredibly serious charge – and indeed, a violation of the oath of office of Obama, Eric Holder, and the other involved attorneys at DOJ. MSNBC, on the other hand, is looking for anything that it can use to delegitimze the Tea Party movement as a whole so that the left need not engage them in a contest of ideology and ideas. There is nothing even remotely moral or intellectually honest about what MSNBC is doing.
It is not only in the press that we see evidence of the seismic change in the landscape. Without doubt, the clearest evidence of that change is the utterly bizarre case of Shirley Sherrod, the Dept. of Agriculture employee fired after a video of a portion of her remarks at an NAACP meeting were posted online by Andrew Breitbart. In the video, Sherrod admits to an act of reverse racism, though she later goes on to say that through the incident she grew in office, that the world is not all about white versus black, but rich versus poor. The NAACP immediately denounced Sherrod and the Dept. of Agriculture immediately fired her, neither apparently realizing that her admission of an act of reverse racism was only part of the story. (That said, Sherrod since then has shown herself a race baiter of the highest order. See Rhymes With Right and Gay Patriot (H/T Instapundit))
When was the last time you saw a left wing organization not merely come down against one of its own for showing something akin to reverse racism, but doing so as a knee jerk reaction? Indeed, prior to Sherrod, such remarks were virtually always either studiously ignored or quickly forgiven by the left. Now it seems there is a new zero tolerance policy at the NAACP.
And when was the last time you saw the Obama administration act with such alacrity to punish an apparent act of reverse racism? Indeed, there are many in Obama's administration today who have a history of reverse racism. And do recall that it was only two years ago when Obama gave his speech on race, stating that he could "no more disown Rev. Wright" than he could disown his white grandmother. It would seem that some in his administration, if not Obama himself, may have recently experienced an epiphany.
I think it fair to assume that the NAACP's knee jerk reaction has its genesis in the push back that they are getting for their scurrilous decision to slime the Tea Party movement as racist. It is equally as reasonable to assume that the decision to fire Sherrod comes from an administration in panic over whites fleeing from support of the administration en masse, perhaps coupled with realization of the very real potential ramifications that the DOJ is picking and choosing which laws to prosecute on the basis of race. And I think it fair to assume the articles we are now seeing decrying “racial tension” in America are in surprise and horror that the race card is no longer working the way it has for the last half century.
The left has suddenly found that they are deeply overdrawn on the race card account. The race card has been a deeply divisive tactic used to distort our body politic for over four decades. The left has lived by the race card; it is fair to forecast that the far left as a serious movement will die by it. If I am right in my assessment, that process has started. When the process ends, it will mark a great advancement for our nation as a whole - and for minorities in particular.
Update: Today, Dem. Sen. Jim Webb, writing in the WSJ, crosses a bright line in American politics that, once, would have brought race cards flying at him at light speed. He calls for an end to most affirmative action programs - the golden goose at the center of the far left's power base. Moreover, he does so on the ground that the programs have stopped being remedial and are now a means to discriminate against white males.
Webb has picked a topic that has wide national support. Polls last year found that a significat majority of Americans support an end to affirmative action for all but the disabled. That support was extremely strong among Republicans and Independents, but only at 33% among Democrats.
But why now? Either Webb is a lone wolf in the Dem. Party on this matter, or he is part of a larger strategy to stem Obama's loss of support by throwing out a red herring to Middle America that the left has no intention of acting upon. To the contrary, the far left has been busy over the past eighteen months legislating ever more affirmative action type policies. Indeed, it is beyond any doubt that the far left, whose very existence is centered on special treatment of victim classes, would defend affirmative action with all the furor of the Nazis defending Berlin in the last days of WWII.
To promote equality of rights and to eradicate caste or race prejudice among the citizens of the United States; to advance the interest of colored citizens; to secure for them impartial suffrage; and to increase their opportunities for securing justice in the courts, education for the children, employment according to their ability and complete equality before law.
Mission Statement, Charter of the National Association For The Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 1911
. . . I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." . . .
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. . . .
Martin Luther King, Jr, Speech at the Lincoln Memorial, 28 August 1963
What has happened to so thoroughly corrupt the "civil rights" movement in America. Once it was a noble and laudable struggle for equality. Today, at best, it is nothing more than a naked political tool of the left, to be trotted out as a means of destroying the credibility of the left's opponents. It has nothing to do with achieving equality. It has everything to do with political power and money.
Exhibit 1 - on Tuesday, in a nakedly political move, the NAACP's Board of Directors perpetrated an atrocious libel, voting to condemn the Tea Party for "tolerating racism."
The resolution initially said the NAACP would "repudiate the racism of the Tea Parties" and stand against the movement's attempt to "push our country back to the pre-civil rights era," though the wording was amended to downplay criticism of all Tea Partiers while asking them to repudiate bigots in their own ranks.
"We take no issue with the Tea Party movement. We believe in freedom of assembly and people raising their voices in a democracy," the NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous said in a written statement announcing the unanimous vote. "What we take issue with is the Tea Party's continued tolerance for bigotry and bigoted statements.
"The time has come for them to accept the responsibility that comes with influence and make clear there is no place for racism and anti-Semitism, homophobia and other forms of bigotry in their movement."
NAACP leaders have referenced an incident in March when Tea Party protesters allegedly hurled racial epithets at black lawmakers on Capitol Hill ahead of a health care vote.
The "March incident" refers to when members of the Black Caucus went out into the crowd of Tea Party protesters seeking to solicit any hint of racism. Later that day, several of the members of the Black Caucus claimed to have heard numerous racial slurs hurled at them. They had Jesse Jackson Jr. walking behind them recording their march through the protests. Virtually every broadcast news network and a great many individuals were also recording. Yet not a single bit of evidence has been produced to substantiate their claim. In other words, Rep. Clyburn and every other member of the Black Caucus seem, in fact, to be engaging in slander of grotesque proportions.
None of that has stopped the left from using the "March incident" to tag the Tea Party with racism, and equally outrageous, none of it has stopped the left wing MSM from playing right along. ABC hyped these scurrilous charges, as did the AP, in their reporting of the NAACP's vote to tag the Tea Party with racism.
Elsewhere in just the past week, we were treated to Jesse Jackson twisting Cleavland Cavaliers owner's statement of displeasure at the lack of loyalty of Lebron James into the most vile of racist charges. Most people merely shrugged. It was just Jesse being Jesse.
Then we have one of more odious individuals on the planet, Louis Farakhan, a man who preaches hatred and racism with every move of his tongue, demanding reparations from "the Jews" for the their history of racism and their role in enslaving the blacks. It actually makes a nice circle to this post to point out that the founders of the NAACP were three white people, and one of those three was in fact Jewish - Henry Moscowitz. Historically, Jews were deeply involved in the efforts to achieve racial equality for blacks. It is estimated that "50 percent of the civil rights attorneys in the South during the 1960s were Jews, as were over 50 percent of the Whites who went to Mississippi in 1964 to challenge Jim Crow Laws." None of that of course makes a dent in the wall of ignorance and reverse racism that oozes from the pours of Farrakhan. Nor does it matter to Farakhan that the worst of the worst when it came to the slave traders have been Muslims - and that includes the enslavement of blacks. It should also be noted that the high minded NAACP, while asking the Tea Party to denounce anti-Semitism in their ranks (is their any), is wholly ignoring the single most virulent font of anti-semitism in the U.S. today - Louis Farakhan.
Then there is Obama, a President deeply, if not overtly, involved in the politics of race. Instead of trying to "heal the racial divide," Obama has injected racism ever more into the laws and the national dialogue. What does it say when the First Lady, Michelle Obama, speaks at the NAACP Convention the day before they vote to tag the Tea Party as racists. What does it say when Obama chides the police for arresting Henry Louis Gates, himself a race baiter of the first order, when Gates refused to cooperate with police conducting a lawful search.
Then there are Obama's legislative proposals. Obama's proposed new financial regulations do not merely continue the race based social engineering into lending standards that brought us to financial ruin, they actually expand that engineering. Further those same regulations establish de facto hiring quotas for minorities and women throughout the financial industry.
All of that is vast racial overreach by Obama. But then there is racial corruption at DOJ. Crediting the testimony of whistleblower J. Christian Adams, the DOJ is no longer accepting voting rights cases in which the defendant is black, they are refusing to enforce the law requiring states to scrub their voting rolls, thus suborning vote fraud, and they have lied to Congress about the decision to drop the civil prosecution of the New Black Panthers. And as outrageous as all of that is, it is perhaps dwarfed by the decision of the Holder DOJ to refuse to answer lawful subpoenas from the Office of Civil Rights seeking to investigate these charges.
And on a final note, there is the ultimate betrayal - the fact that virtually all of the "black leadership," in pushing their vile reverse racism, are doing precious little to actually improve the plight of that significant minority of blacks still mired in the poverty and violence of inner cities. These race hustlers preach and push everything through the lens of racism to accrete power and wealth. They would keep all blacks focused on America circa 1859 for the same reason. They don't preach advancement, they preach balkanization. Merely juxtapose two relatively recent bits of news to demonstrate this reality.
The first bit - the death of former KKK member Robert Byrd of West Virginia. Byrd was never a believer in equality of man. As the Daily Caller points out, he did not merely vote against both the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he filibustered the latter for three months. "In 1997, he voted against a voucher program for D.C.; when the program passed almost a decade later despite his objections, it ended up helping African-American students in ways that the District’s failed public schools could not." Yet upon his death, this same man was feted by the NAACP.
Juxtapose against that the utter travesty of Obama and the left's handling of the school voucher program in DC. By all accounts, the DC voucher program was a huge success, offering hope to numerous inner city students whose public school system was the worst in the nation. Within months of his coronation, Obama shut the program down. Why he did so is not a mystery. On the one hand were blacks mired in poverty who were benefiting significantly from a program. Weighed against their plight was a teachers union flush with money taken involuntarily from all teachers and who did not want to see the voucher program continue. It was no contest. So where was the NAACP, Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan and the Congressional Black Caucus when Obama decided to end the DC Voucher Program?
And to it all, a corrupt media yawns, imposing on America the most outrageous of double standards. Where people should be hounded out of office and the public square for their vile reverse racism, for their gross hypocrisy, they instead given a pass by the media and feted by the left. It is perverse and grossly unfair. Most of America supported the call for equality of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the NAACP, else it would not have happened. There can be no doubt whatsoever that most of America fully supports the notion of equality today. But what the NAACP, the "black leaders," and the far left in Washington are seeking today has absolutely nothing to do with racial equality. And tagging Middle America as racist - not the brightest of moves. I said two years ago that electing Obama would set back race relations in America by decades, because it was clear from his history that his claim that he would "heal the racial divide" was purely false. His entire history pointed in the opposite direction.
According to Obama, it was Wall Street greed and the lack of financial regulation. Indeed, to prove the point, he had DOJ and SEC initiate criminal investigations of one of the biggest of derivatives traders, AIG's Joseph Cassano. Further, Obama established a commission under Phil Angelides to lay blame - then promptly pushed for vast new financial regulations several months prior to the completion of the commission's report. No need to worry about that though, as the Commission's scope of investigation does not include Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This would be the same as commissioning an investigation into the causes of the civil war, yet excluding slavery from the scope of the investigation. The bottom line, even if the useless commission report were of any value, even if its recommendations were valid, and assuming all recommendations were followed completely, given the limited investigatory scope, the reality is that, the chances of the recommendations actually and effectively sorting out our financial sector would be minimal.
Further, it would seem today that the claim that derivatives were at the heart of our financial mess took a major knock over the past month. The WSJ reports that "both SEC and Justice Department investigations, which many had expected to expose the ultimate subprime malefactor, recently evaporated overnight, apparently clearing (AIG's derivatives trader) Mr. Cassano of wrongdoing." Color me not surprised. Derivatives played an important role in spreading risk. They fell apart not because of "Wall St. greed," (nor "white folk's greed," for that matter) but largely because of mark to market accounting rules and an incredibly anomalous turn of events where the market for mortgage backed securities dropped to zero for a period of time.
At any rate, the proximate cause of the sub-prime meltdown, and thus our current fiscal crisis, was the left's social engineering to force erosion of lending standards and downpayment minimums based on what amounts to racial quotas - no finding of any actual racism need be identified. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were then used to create massive demand in this degraded market.
The single most important correction Obama could make to insure a financial melt-down of this ilk never again occurs would be to reinstitute reasonable, colorblind lending standards by simpling striking the provisions of the Community Reinvestment Act that, today, punish lending institutions for failing to meet racial quotas without respect to whether any single act of racial discrimination every occurred. Obama would of course retain authority to punish severely any cases of actual racial discrimination in lending. Obama has chosen the opposite tack. He is significantly expanding government enforcement of current CRA provisions as part of his financial "reform."
And now we learn today that Obama, as part of his financial regulations, plans to introduce race and gender quotas into our financial sector itself. This from Real Clear Politics:
. . . Section 342 [of the Senate & House financial regulation bill] declares that race and gender employment ratios, if not quotas, must be observed by private financial institutions that do business with the government. In a major power grab, the new law inserts race and gender quotas into America's financial industry.
In addition to this bill's well-publicized plans to establish over a dozen new financial regulatory offices, Section 342 sets up at least 20 Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion. This has had no coverage by the news media and has large implications.
The Treasury, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the 12 Federal Reserve regional banks, the Board of Governors of the Fed, the National Credit Union Administration, the Comptroller of the Currency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau...all would get their own Office of Minority and Women Inclusion.
Each office would have its own director and staff to develop policies promoting equal employment opportunities and racial, ethnic, and gender diversity of not just the agency's workforce, but also the workforces of its contractors and sub-contractors.
Is it just me who is getting the old Soviet political officer vibe?
What would be the mission of this new corps of Federal monitors? The Dodd-Frank bill sets it forth succinctly and simply - all too simply. The mission, it says, is to assure "to the maximum extent possible the fair inclusion" of women and minorities, individually and through businesses they own, in the activities of the agencies, including contracting.
How to define "fair" has bedeviled government administrators, university admissions officers, private employers, union shop stewards and all other supervisors since time immemorial - or at least since Congress first undertook to prohibit discrimination in employment.
Sometimes, "fair" has been defined in relation to population numbers, . . .
Lest there be any narrow interpretation of Congress's intent, either by agencies or eventually by the courts, the bill specifies that the "fair" employment test shall apply to "financial institutions, investment banking firms, mortgage banking firms, asset management firms, brokers, dealers, financial services entities, underwriters, accountants, investment consultants and providers of legal services." That last would appear to rope in law firms working for financial entities.
Contracts are defined expansively as "all contracts for business and activities of an agency, at all levels, including contracts for the issuance or guarantee of any debt, equity, or security, the sale of assets, the management of the assets of the agency, the making of equity investments by the agency, and the implementation by the agency of programs to address economic recovery."
This latest attempt by Congress to dictate what "fair" employment means is likely to encourage administrators and managers, in government and in the private sector, to hire women and minorities for the sake of appearances, even if some new hires are less qualified than other applicants. The result is likely to be redundant hiring and a wasteful expansion of payroll overhead.
If the director decides that a contractor has not made a good-faith effort to include women and minorities in its workforce, he is required to contact the agency administrator and recommend that the contractor be terminated.
Section 342's provisions are broad and vague, and are certain to increase inefficiency in federal agencies. To comply, federal agencies are likely to find it easier to employ and contract with less-qualified women and minorities, merely in order to avoid regulatory trouble. This would in turn decrease the agencies' efficiency, productivity and output, while increasing their costs.
Setting up these Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion is a troubling indictment of current law. Women and minorities have an ample range of legal avenues already to ensure that businesses engage in nondiscriminatory practices. By creating these new offices, Congress does not believe that existing law is sufficient.
Cabinet-level departments already have individual Offices of Civil Rights and Diversity. In addition, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Labor Department's Office of Federal Contract Compliance are charged with enforcing racial and gender discrimination laws.
With the new financial regulation law, the federal government is moving from outlawing discrimination to setting up a system of quotas. Ultimately, the only way that financial firms doing business with the government would be able to comply with the law is by showing that a certain percentage of their workforce is female or minority.
The new Offices of Women and Minorities represent a major change in employment law by imposing gender and racial quotas on the financial industry. The issue deserves careful debate - rather than a few pages slipped into the financial regulation bill.
And Obama campaigned on a promise of healing America's racial divide? Between this and the reverse racism pervading the DOJ, it would seem that, like seemingly all of Obama's promises, the gulf between what he promised and the reality he has brought are night and day.
Update: It would appear that Obama is not merely going to force race front and center of our lending industry, but that his administration has actually resuscitated the very riskiest of loans - no doc's. This from Hot Air (links omitted):
Remember how angry America got in the wake of the housing market collapse about the no-document mortgages bought by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? The so-called “liar loans,” also known as “NINJAs” (no income, no job or assets) frequently allowed people who shouldn’t have qualified for mortgages to get loans by simply not disclosing their financial position, and then speculate that the equity would increase fast enough to either flip the house on a resale or refinance under better terms. ABC News and Forbes reports that just two years after the collapse, “liar loans” are making a comeback. . . .
In the height of the housing boom in 2006 and 2007, low-doc loans accounted for roughly 40% of newly issued mortgages in the U.S., according to mortgage-data firm FirstAmericanCoreLogic. University of Chicago assistant professor AmitSeru says that for subprime loans, the portion exceeded 50%.
Then came the housing collapse, with subprime loan defaults playing a leading role, particularly the low-doc “liar” variety. The delinquency rate for subprime loans reached 39% in early 2009, seven times the rate in 2005, according to LPS Applied Analytics.
. . . [T]he federal government has jumped feet first back into risky lending, this time through FHA . . .:
. . . the Federal Housing Administration is making 95% LTV [Loan To Value] loans to low-income borrowers with poor credit and little savings, he argues.
Say what?
Well, the fact that the federal government has shifted its social engineering to FHA after all but destroying Freddie and Fannie should come as no surprise. Nor should it come as a surprise that they’re using the same mortgage-backed securities mechanism that created the global financial collapse to shed the cost of guaranteeing those loans. But one might have thought that the collapse of the housing bubble from overspeculation and irrational supply of credit would have taught Washington a lesson about interfering with the lending markets.
If FHA is guaranteeing loans for 5% down to people with bad credit and no liquidity, then be prepared for the next collapse and bailout, this time at FHA. . . .
The only way that Obama and the far left can lead us down this road to hell again is because they have successfully hidden the actual causes of our current economic crisis. When Obama was elected, the chance that Congress would actually investigate the causes of the crisis dropped to zero. And indeed, it would seem that our Post Racial President is actually going to increase the degree of racial / social engineering in our financial sector. God help us but we are in a race - will Obama destroy our country before we can throw he and the far left out of office?
Former career DOJ attorney J Christian Adams has made several damning indictments of the Obama DOJ in the past several days - that the New Black Panther case was dropped on racial grounds, that reverse racism pervades the DOJ's Voting Rights section, and that one or more members of the DOJ has testified falsely to Congress. But as serious as those charges are, they pale in comparison to his latest charge made in sworn testimony before the Civil Rights Commission - that the DOJ is deliberately refusing to pursue cases requiring states to update and verify their voting rolls. In essence, this is aiding and abetting - if not suborning - vote fraud. This from John Fund at the WSJ:
. . . Mr. Adams leveled an even more explosive charge beyond the Panther case. He testified that last year Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes made a jaw-dropping announcement to attorneys in Justice's Voting Rights section. She said she would not support any enforcement of a key section of the federal "Motor Voter" law -- Section 8, which requires states to periodically purge their voter rolls of dead people, felons, illegal voters and those who have moved out of state.
According to Mr. Adams, Justice lawyers were told by Ms. Fernandes: "We're not interested in those kind of cases. What do they have to do with helping increase minority access and turnout? We want to increase access to the ballot, not limit it."
If true, Ms. Fernandes was endorsing a policy of ignoring federal law and encouraging potential voter fraud. Ms. Fernandes was unavailable for comment yesterday, but the Justice Department has issued a statement accusing Mr. Adams of "distorting facts" in general and having a political agenda.
But there is some evidence backing up Mr. Adams. Last year, Justice abandoned a case it had pursued for three years against Missouri for failing to clean up its rolls. When filed in 2005, one-third of Missouri counties had more registered voters than voting-age residents. What's more, Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, a Democrat who this year is her party's candidate for a vacant U.S. Senate seat, contended that her office had no obligation to ensure individual counties were complying with the federal law mandating a cleanup of their voter rolls.
The case made slow but steady progress through the courts for more than three years, amid little or no evidence of progress in cleaning up Missouri's voter rolls. Despite this, Obama Justice saw fit to dismiss the case in March 2009. Curiously, only a month earlier, Ms. Carnahan had announced her Senate candidacy. Missouri has a long and documented history of voter fraud in Democratic-leaning cities such as St. Louis and Kansas City. Ms. Carnahan may now stand to benefit from voter fraud facilitated by the improperly kept voter rolls that she herself allowed to continue.
Mr. Adams' allegations would seem to call for the senior management of Justice to be compelled to testify under oath to U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. But Justice is making none of its officials available and is refusing to enforce subpoenas issued by the commission. The more this story develops, the more it appears Justice is engaged in a massive coverup of its politicization of voting rights cases.
On a related note, as to our modern "early voting" practices, see this from Tom Blumer at Bizzy Blog.
The bedrock foundation of our nation is the sanctity of the ballot box. If our citizens come to perceive that fraud pervades their vote, then people will begin to feel that their vote does not count and that they are being ruled by people who have gotten their seat by criminal means. When that happens, democracy ends and blood in the streets begins. The left is playing a dangerous game indeed.
Posts
