The New York Times, Racism, and Tucker Carlson

Tucker Carlson often notes that Dr. Martin Luther King believed that Black Americans should be judged by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin.  The New York Times responds by claiming that Tucker Carlson’s show is the “most racist program in the history of cable news.” 

There is much more of interest in The American Spectator article by Jeffrey Lord on the New York Times and its claims that Tucker Carlson is a racist.  Tucker once said that the mass immigration of illegals made America poorer and dirtier.  Of course the immediate effect of the immigrants lack of wealth and income was to make America poorer, but the dirtier comment was especially met with howls of protest.  Yet, many federal and state reports had previously noted that the illegal aliens had left huge amounts of garbage behind them along our border areas and very extensive and expensive clean-ups had been required over the years.  Tucker had to explain this was what he was alluding to, though it would have been better had he explained that immediately.  The New York Times made further attacks on Carlson, whose criticisms hit the sensitive nerve centers of the left so often.

The Lord article makes many interesting observations about The New York Times and racism.  For the record, the newspaper that claims to be the newspaper of the record, The New York Times, is owned by a family whose wealth derived from the ownership of slaves.  Adolph S. Ochs began his publishing career as owner of The Chattanooga Times before he acquired The New York Times.  Several of his family members had fought for the Confederacy.  His mother had smuggled medicine to the Confederate Army.  In 1900, Ochs’ New York Times editorialized that the Democratic Party “may justly insist that the evils of negro suffrage were wantonly inflicted on them.”  The Lord article notes that Ochs made many contributions to the erection of Confederate memorials. 

The New York Times has ever since been true to the Democratic Party that embraced and fought for slavery for many decades and then denied Black Americans the vote for many more decades.  To this day, The New York Times and the Democratic Party tell us we ought to judge people by the color of their skin.  They tell us that Black Americans cannot be competitive in a merit-based society, so we must declare any appreciation of merit to be racist.  The logical conclusion of their belief is that Black Americans should not even seek to develop merit in their character.  They still tell us it is racist to judge individuals by the content of their character, just as they did historically.  Give them credit for the consistency of their racism, even as you declare their beliefs terribly wrongheaded.

I look forward to the day when my granddaughters will be judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin.  That will not happen if The New York Times and the Democratic Party have their way.

Black Education Tragedy is New - Walter E. Williams

 If you believe that the atrocious inner city educations that many black Americans receive today is due to the legacy of black slavery or due to systemic racial discrimination, then how do you explain the much greater success of inner city black schools of the past compared to today's government holding pens for blacks?  Read Prof. Walter E. Williams article Black Education Tragedy is New and gain a more rational perspective.

The Otherworldly Mind of Poor, Lost Joe Biden and Implications for Black Americans

This is a satire with a mix of the facts as Joe Biden sees things and real world facts.  Be intelligent enough to take it as such.  I have observed far too much emotion unguided by reason of late.

Joe Biden, the Democrat who would be President, has said that 150 million Americans have died by gun violence.  More recently, he said that 120 million Americans have died from the "novel coronavirus", to use the flimsy name for the Chinese Communist Party coronavirus preferred by the Democrats and other socialists.

In 2017, 52% of homicide victims were black.  The percentage of the American population who are black is 13.4% and the American population is thought to be 329 million by normal people, though it is clearly much less in Joe Biden's world of mass deaths.  Doing the math, normal people would conclude there are 44 million black Americans.

If 52% of homicide victims are black and Biden's 150 million deaths by gun violence is true, then 78 million black Americans died by gun violence or by equally violent means.  Oddly enough, 88% of their killers were other blacks, so Joe must think that of the 78 million black Americans he thinks were killed by gun violence, nearly 69 million were killed by other blacks.  The Democrats' response to this unbelievable black self-extermination is to defund the police.  The Democrats' agenda does not include the preservation of black lives.

The man who would be President, says 120 million Americans have died of the coronavirus.  He and his socialist party have complained that black Americans are dying from the coronavirus in disproportionate numbers.  Black Americans are dying from the virus at rates several times that of white Americans, though the data on black deaths from this cause is not at all complete.  Nonetheless, it is likely not far from the case that about half of all coronavirus deaths are those of black Americans.  Then using the deaths due to coronavirus according to the man who would be President, Joe Biden, about 60 million black Americans have died from this virus.

The man who would be president and the socialist party that so lusts for power to rule the American people that they have in desperation put forth Biden as their knight in tarnished armor, apparently think that 78 million black Americans died from gun violence and another 60 million died from the "novel coronavirus", for a total of 138 million black American deaths.  Without an overwhelming percentage of the black vote, Joe Biden cannot ascend to the presidency, so he must be extremely worried about the upcoming 2020 presidential election.  According to Joe, from his bunker in his basement, there are no longer any black Americans left to vote for him.  In Joe's otherworldly mind, all 138 million out of 44 million black Americans have recently died from either gun violence or the "novel coronavirus."

Fortunately, Joe and his basement bunker, appear to be in another dimension and not in that of normal people.  As bad as gun violence is among black Americans and as bad as the Chinese Communist Party coronavirus has been for the health of black Americans, there are still many millions of black Americans ready to vote for poor Joe.  Despite the fact that Democrats insist on the poorest public education for black communities, despite their refusal to provide adequate police protection in those communities, and despite the anti-business policies of Democrats which suppress jobs in the communities they rule, millions of black Americans will vote for Joe, the one-time segregationist, the present searcher for his lost marbles, and the future numb-minded pawn of the socialists.  If American blacks placed a high value on their own lives, they certainly would not vote for poor, lost Joe and his Democrat socialist handlers.

Prof. Walter E. Williams on Cruelty to Black Students and Freedom of Speech in Colleges

My undergraduate college, Brown University, is tooting its horn that its new freshman class is nearly half "people of color."  I earned my Ph.D. in Physics from Case Western Reserve University, which is mentioned in the second Prof. Williams column below for the ignominy of having safe spaces to protect students from ideas that make them uncomfortable.  Brown University is no better than Case Western Reserve University in discouraging freedom of speech on campus.  Along with most universities and colleges, they have forgotten their true mission, which should be encouraging students to think rationally, creatively, and independently while learning substantial portions of the knowledge of mankind.

In his first column, Prof. Williams points out that "the average black student 12th-grader has the academic proficiency of a white eight- or ninth-grader."  He notes that this may cause many black college students to feel discriminated against just as a group of average white eighth- or ninth-graders would feel if they were shoved into a college with average white twelfth-graders.  They really are not prepared to compete.  The failure of education was long before college and that failure must be addressed much earlier in the education system.  Colleges that try to pretend the failure is redeemable with affirmative action are only doing further harm to the unprepared students they are admitting.  They are humiliating them so that the college administrators, faculty, and alumnae can all falsely claim they are remedying past discriminations.

As is so often the case, Prof. Williams wants his readers to deal with reality and he will rub their noses in it no matter how much they want feelings of  moral superiority purchased by denying reality. Please read his columns and do his bidding - think about them.

Prof. Walter E. Williams on Education and Guns

Prof. Walter E. Williams, professor of economics at George Mason University, has written two thoughtful columns this month.  One is on education, with some emphasis on the education of black Americans, and one is on guns, which are treated as though they are evil, though bombers are treated as the source of evil rather than bombs.  These columns may be read here.

Obama's Wealth Redistribution Takes It From Blacks and Hispanics

Never, ever assume that the proclaimed purpose of a Progressive Elitist is what he says it is.  Progressive elitists are thorough-going unprincipled pragmatists and they do whatever leads them to their desired results.  If it takes a lie to defraud others into giving them the power they want, they will not hesitate to lie.  A now classic example is the set of massive lies used to enact ObamaCare:

• If you like your health insurance plan you can keep it.
• If you like your doctor you can keep him.
• The cost of health insurance premiums for the average family will be reduced by $2500 a year.
• Most of the 47 million Americans said not to have health insurance will get it under ObamaCare.
• ObamaCare is not a tax.
• ObamaCare will cause few Americans to lose their jobs.

So, why would anyone believe that when Obama said his purpose was to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor, that would be the result of his policies?  Well, some people are just that naive and that blind to the evidence of history.  Let us examine the evidence of the recent past.

Every three years the Federal Reserve publishes the Survey of Consumer Finances.  The Pew Research Center has produced a very useful summary of the results addressing the differences in household net worth for non-Hispanic blacks, Hispanics, and non-Hispanic white Americans.  Despite years of claims of "economic recovery" under Obama, the median net worth of all households was lower in 2013 than in 2010 and much lower than in 2007.  The median household wealth of 2007 was $135,700 in 2013 dollars.  In 2010, it had fallen to a mere $82,300, before falling further in 2013 to $81,400.  Median household wealth in the USA in 2013 had "recovered" to 60.0% of the median wealth of 2007!

But from 2010 to 2013, non-Hispanic white household income improved a minuscule 2.4%.  This is essentially stagnation in terms of normal wealth growth, let alone the growth characteristic of most economic recoveries.  This is a horror story by itself.

The worst horror story is that of American non-Hispanic blacks.  In 2010, black median household wealth was only 86.5% of what it had been in 2007.  So in 2010, blacks had lost 13.5% of their median household wealth compared to the 28.0% lost by whites.  But then instead of stagnation from 2010 to 2013, black median household wealth dropped precipitously to 57.3% of their 2007 wealth!  So under those much bally-hoed years of the Obama "recovery", non-Hispanic black median household wealth fell a further 33.7%, after the earlier three-year fall of 13.5%.  Black Americans lost more under Obama's "recovery" than they did in the early stages of the Great Socialist Recession!

By 2010, Hispanic American median household wealth fell to 67.8% of their 2007 wealth in 2013 dollars.  This loss of 32.2% was even worse than the 28.0% loss of non-Hispanic white households.  Once again, Hispanic Americans had further losses of household wealth during the Obama "recovery".  In 2013, median Hispanic household wealth was 58.1% of that of 2007 for a total loss of 41.9%, and an additional loss between 2010 and 2013 of 14.4%.

The period of time from 2007 to 2013 was a disaster for most American households.  White median household wealth fell from $192,500 to $141,900.  Hispanic wealth fell from $23,600 to $13,700, making their reserves razor thin.  Black household wealth fell from a median of $19,200 to $11,000.  Both the median black and Hispanic households now have almost negligible wealth. This means they have almost no protection against further economic shocks and almost no reserves for retirement.  Even before the Great Socialist Recession they were ill-prepared for either.

Obama's anti-business and anti-growth policies of higher business taxes, much increased and expensive regulations, ObamaCare, and an alarmist carbon-based fuel vendetta, have hurt the black and Hispanic Americans the most.  Their households were the least well-provisioned to survive these economic shocks to the private sector that madman Obama so much relishes delivering.  When Big Government takes resources away from the private sector where they are put to productive use and redistributes them to political uses, it is the poor and the least skilled and educated who are hurt the most.  Those who benefit are the politically connected and the poor are not usually well-connected.  They do not have the money to entice politicians and they are the least likely to devote the time or even to have the time for the study of the Byzantine workings of Big Government.

The miracle of wealth generation is well-known.  It is Capitalism with its emphasis on mutual cooperation and competition in the private sector that generates wealth.  Big Government is a very efficient consumer of wealth.  It takes wealth by force and destroys it in huge gulps.  Obama has proven that he is a particularly Big, Greedy Gulper of Wealth.  Where does that wealth come from?  It comes from American households.  The more government uses for political purposes, the less wealth American households have to pursue their own dreams and happiness.

Such are the consequences of allowing a Great Socialist Leader the power to redistribute wealth.  The story is always the same.  The socialist redistribution of wealth always reduces the total wealth of the society and it reduces that of most of the people of such a society.  A few politically well-connected people prosper, as we have seen with Obama's crony mercantilist friends.

Curious it is that mercantilism is usually described as the nature of the politically connected economies under monarchies and the accumulation of aristocrats hundreds of years ago.  It was the economic system before Capitalism.  It was the economic system of Medieval times.  Mercantilism, with its effective aristocracy of the politically well-connected is the economic system that Obama and the Progressive Elitists have turned America toward in their Transformation of America.  Theirs is a profoundly retrograde viewpoint that takes us back to the Divine Right of Kings, now the Divine Right of the Politically-Connected Progressive Elitist Aristocracy.  As in the feudal system, most of the people are not politically-connected.  Most of the people are made poorer and dependent on those who are politically connected.  Most of the people know almost nothing about what is going on in the government and have no effective control over its actions.

A vigorous and little-controlled private sector creates great wealth.  It may not produce it equally for everyone, but it does produce wealth for almost everyone.  Feudalism in its socialist or Progressive garb, destroys wealth for almost everyone.  When only partially implemented, it may only reduce the rate at which the people can acquire wealth.  When implemented as far as Obama and his Progressive Elitist allies have implemented it, it actually destroys wealth.  We see that in the reduced median household wealth figures above.

Yet, only a fraction of the implementation of wealth redistribution and socialist policies of the Progressive Elitists has been put in place.  There is much, much more wealth destruction that their policies are capable of doing.  Those who understand this should understand that a principled reduction of government powers and their scope of implementation is necessary.  We ought to return government to its legitimate purpose of protecting the equal, sovereign rights of the individual to life, liberty, property, the ownership of their own minds, bodies, and labor, and to the pursuit of their own happiness.

The September Jobs Horror Story - As Dismal as Dismal August

In September, 204,000 fewer people were employed than in August.  In August, 215,000 fewer people were employed than in July 2010.  Meanwhile, the working age population has been growing.  The September working age population grew by 223,000 people compared to August, at least 60% of whom want jobs.  Yet the usually stated seasonally adjusted unemployment rate remained about the same as it has been for several months.  This is because the number of people the government thinks want work shrank by 619,000 people in September compared to August.  In August the number of people supposed wanting work shrank by 378,000 compared to the number looking for work in July.  As always in a long recession or depression, the shrinking numbers of people known to be looking for work do not mean that more people are not looking for work or wanting work which is hopelessly unavailable.  Obama's promised change has brought an end to the hope for employment.  Many people, especially many of the young people who are coming into the working age now or recently, face horrible odds in finding a job.  They should be attributing this to Obama's transformation of America.  His many anti-business attitudes have certainly had destructive consequences.

The table below presents the jobs numbers taken from the Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment report for September 2010.  The important ones are that the working age population is growing and so many new jobs need to be created for the majority of that increased number who want a job.  The next number of great importance is the number of people employed.  That needs to increase greatly simply to keep up with the population growth.  When it is falling, that is a disaster.  As noted above, it fell badly in both August and September.  The so-called unemployment percentage is not very meaningful in a long recession.  What is meaningful is the calculation of the number of jobs needed so that as large a percentage of the working age population has jobs as had jobs when the economy was in much better shape, such as in January 2000 when 67.49% of the work age population had jobs or were actively looking for them.  The unemployment rate then was only 4.04%, which was a figure with some meaning in those circumstances.  Of course some of the unemployed then were actually transitioning from one job or career to another and were anything but the long-term unemployed who dominate today's Obama World.

During this recession, the number of missing jobs grew until it reached a maximum number of 23,108,000 jobs in January 2010.  The number of missing jobs then started to decrease and reached a minimum in July of 20,418,000 jobs.  Since then, the number of missing jobs has grown to 21,129,000!  The % Missing Jobs number is less important because that has a similarity to the usual unemployment number: it depends upon the number employed plus the number actively known to be looking for work.  It is of some significance however that that number is considerably higher than the usual unemployment number.

Here are a few interesting employment changes from August to September:

• The number of employed men fell by 633,000.
• The number of employed women increased by 461,000.
• The number of white Americans employed fell by 41,000.
• The number of black Americans employed fell by 161,000.
• The number of Hispanic Americans employed grew by 93,000.
• The number of full-time employed Americans fell by 1,123,000!
• The number of part-time employed Americans increased by 919,000.

It is clear that the changes were very unfavorable to full-time employment, to men, and to black Americans.  They were relatively favorable for women and for Hispanic Americans, though it is likely many of their gains were for the increased number of part-time jobs, rather than in full-time jobs.

This is the last jobs/unemployment report before the election.  Obama's, Pelosi's, and Reid's economic policies and anti-business policies have certainly had a transformative impact on employment.  The impact of ObamaCare on business costs has begun.  The cost of doing financial transactions due to the Dodd-Frank legislation is already going up.  We still wait for news on what taxes will be next year, which is already almost immediately upon us.  Will personal income tax rates go up, will capital gains taxes go up, and will the death tax be collected again as a mechanism to destroy businesses?  We know that the EPA wants to put draconian requirements and costs on using energy that generates CO2, but how expensive will that be in the near future and then in the longer term?  Will the Obama administration ever allow drilling for oil and gas again?  There are many, many business uncertainties and hurdles that the Democrat presidency and Congress have created.  The current dismal jobs situation is the very predictable result.

I will point out explicitly that men and black Americans should be especially eager to see the present Democrat tyranny replaced and punished in the up-coming election.  Most white men will do just that.  Someday, one cannot help but believe that black Americans will catch on to the fact that the Democrats are poison to them and understand that the free market is their only real friend.  Meanwhile, Obama continues to tell us that transferring wealth from the private sector to the public, government sector will somehow create more jobs.  How could he be more wrongheaded on this critical issue?  We are now in a situation in which local and state governments are letting their employees go because the private sector cannot supply the taxes it could in better times, before business fell prey to the Democrat super-majority in Congress and to Obama.