Prof. Walter E. Williams on the State of American Blacks

Professor Walter E. Williams, George Mason University, asks these very challenging questions of those who believe in the politically correct viewpoint of the Progressive Elitist and of those who simply do not think about such issues:

"Is the reason the black family was far healthier in the late-1800s and 1900s  because back then there was far less racial discrimination and greater opportunities?  Or, did what experts call "legacy of slavery" wait several generations to victimize today's blacks?"

When I ask similar questions, I am very frequently called a racist, though I am merely making the inquiries any rational person with a minimal knowledge of history and a normal respect for the abilities of one's fellow man would.  Even Prof. Williams is presented with a problem on how to get readers to acquire sufficient knowledge that he can ask these questions without having them simply dismiss him and the remainder of his article.  He provides several paragraphs of relevant black history in America before he chances posing these questions.  Those of us with such viewpoints as Prof. Williams are very much aware of the ignorance of those who vehemently claim the state of American blacks is explained by the "legacy of slavery."

His article is one that very much needs to be read by most "educated Americans", who are most noteworthy for their university-programed ignorance.  Our universities almost never have the intellectual integrity and courage to ask the questions Prof. Williams asks in this article.  They are unwilling to demonstrate how absurd the politically correct viewpoint is in the light of history, whereas Prof. Williams is a man of admirable courage and integrity.
He also does his homework.  All you have to do is read and a wee bit of thinking.  Of course, you are also welcome to check up on his facts.

If he is wrong about his facts, I want to hear about it.  I would not bet that he is, given that the formidable Dr. Thomas Sowell has a very similar viewpoint.  And while this may mean nothing to the reader, so did the highly esteemed Virginia Baker of Norfolk, Virginia.

Homicide Rates by Guns and Other Factors

There are often claims that there is an explosion of homicide by guns in the USA.  But the actual data are shown here for homicides and non-negligent manslaughter:

This data is from a report by the Congressional Research Service for Congress entitled Gun Control Legislation by William J. Krouse, dated 14 November 2012.  The murder rates and those committed with the use of guns are higher than one would like of course, but they are not exactly exploding.  In fact, they have been coming down.

If we just look at the murder rate by gun and exclude non-negligent manslaughter, the U.S. rate was 2.75 per hundred thousand in 2011.  But this rate varied greatly from state to state and region to region.  The list of states and DC with rates above 3.00 is given below from higher to lower rates:

District of Columbia, 12.46
Louisiana, 10.16
Mississippi, 7.46
South Carolina, 5.41
Michigan, 5.06
Maryland, 4.70
Missouri, 4.64
Arkansas, 4.39
New York, 4.12
Pennsylvania, 3.97
Georgia, 3.93
Tennessee, 3.92
North Carolina, 3.87
Oklahoma, 3.64
Ohio, 3.54
Indiana, 3.29
California, 3.25
Delaware, 3.09
Nevada, 3.07
New Jersey, 3.07

The cause of these major murder rate by gun differences by state and other local variations has not been much discussed.  There does not appear to be a simple and strong rule of thumb based on gun controls that explains this.  DC and Chicago both have severe gun control laws, yet both have very high murder rates by gun.  Maryland and New York have relatively strong gun control laws.  Many of the states in this list also have relatively weak gun controls.  Other factors are apparently at work and they ought to be identified and come under discussion.

One of the most important factors is also silenced by those who police the debate in terms of political correctness.  This chart makes it very clear that a critical factor relates to race and the use of guns in murders.

One of the popular exercises is to compare U.S. murder rates by gun with those of certain Western European countries and Japan and note that we compare badly.  The chart above localizes much of the reason for the bad comparison in the U.S. black population.  Gun control legislation that does not take this racial discrepancy into account is unlikely to achieve much.  One certainly cannot find a legal reason to infringe the 2nd Amendment Right to owning guns of black Americans, while allowing white Americans their individual right to gun ownership.  This is a problem that has to be addressed in a much broader context.

There is actually very little that can be done by legislation about the murder rate by guns.  The primary issues are deeply seated in various American sub-cultures.  Even such an issue as the effort to identify mentally ill people who should not have guns is a secondary issue.  It is one worth pursuing and trying to improve, but we should have no illusions that it will have a major effect in reducing the amount of gun murders in America.

Last Electoral College Result Prediction on Presidential Election

I believe the most likely outcome of the Presidential election will be:

Of the generally recognized swing states, the only one that I believe is foolish enough to vote for Obama is Nevada.  Nevada showed its perfidy by voting for Senator Harry Reid, who has refused to allow the Senate to obey the law and produce a budget ever since Obama occupied the White House.  Harry Reid is wily, but a very wrongheaded man.  The state that could send him over and over to the Senate has the good judgment of a Las Vegas labor union.  In other words, Nevada is too much like California now, with which state it shares both an astronomical unemployment rate and home foreclosure rate.  Sometimes, no oftentimes, the people of a given area suffer mass delusions.  I know, I live in the Baltimore - Washington corridor, where mass delusion reigns supreme.  I do think there is about a 40% chance that Nevada will vote for the much superior candidate, Romney.

There is about a 20% likelihood that one of the three states, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Minnesota will vote for Romney.  I believe Romney will win the election with a differential in the percentage total vote of between 2 and 4%.  If I am wrong, I think a win by 5% is more likely than one by 1%.  A win by 5% will mean that Romney will likely carry at least two of the states Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Minnesota.  Both Pennsylvania and Michigan will be very hard hit by Obama's plans to shut down the coal-fired electric power plants and both will be hurt by his plans to discourage hydraulic fracturing to release shale oil and gas.

Most of the polls are underestimating the turnout of Republicans and those Independents who have had more than enough of Obama.  They are overestimating the turnout of Democrats.  This is even true of Rasmussen polls, which are among the best of the polls.  The fact that Romney has a normal Republican lead with men and Obama has much less than the normal Democrat lead with women figures very big in my understanding of how this election will turn out.  Another key factor is the fact that Independents are decidedly favoring Romney over Obama.  There will also be substantially more crossover Democrats voting for Romney than Republicans voting for Obama in this election.  These factors have to generally push all of the swing states, most of which are now mostly Republican at the state level, into the Romney column.  The work of the Tea Party Americans in ensuring this is also underestimated.  The Evangelicals have also become aroused.

Obama is left only with substantial majorities among young people, blacks, and Hispanic Americans.  Each of these groups has suffered just unbelievably high unemployment.  Falling incomes and rising prices, such as energy prices, have hit blacks and Hispanic Americans especially hard.  The fraction of young Americans who favor Obama is high, but usually these young Americans do not vote in large numbers.  We will see that many fewer of them will vote in this election than in 2008 and of those who vote, a very substantially larger fraction will vote Republican.  The turnout of black and Hispanic Americans will also be lower.  The decrease in the fraction who vote for Obama this time as compared to 2008 will be much smaller than that among the young, though it will be greater for Hispanics than blacks.

Now that Americans have had so much time to get to know Obama and to be angered so many times by his lies and deceptions, I am very disappointed that we are still in a situation in which nearly half of all Americans will vote for this con man and failed President.  How anyone could want four years of constant attacks on our individual rights and the resulting economic stagnation, is very much beyond my understanding.  Romney should have easily surpassed Obama with well over 300 electoral votes.  It appears more likely that there are too many very foolish Americans for that to happen.  At this point, it looks to me that Romney will get 295 electoral votes.

I will be heartened if Romney comes very close in Minnesota, my birth state, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, however.  Coupling that with wins in Iowa, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio and the continued shift of the Midwest into the Republican column may be a good sign of things to come.  We have already seen these states send more Republicans to their state houses and to the House of Representatives.  They have been electing Republican governors as well.  The private sector unions have been losing power as they have lost membership.  More and more Mid-westerners are learning that if they are to have well-paying jobs, it is good that the governments not be anti-business.  As Mid-westerners show more respect for economic freedoms, they will align more with the more reality-interested Republican Party than with the socialist Democratic Party.  This re-alignment may take a couple more election cycles to be complete, but it sure is important to America's future freedom and prosperity.

Romney is Going to Win the Election

The outcome of the 2012 Presidential election will be decided in the six swing states in light gray in the electoral map below.  It is interesting that four of them are in the Midwest.

Romney only needs 8 more electoral votes to win, since a tie of 269 votes each will be decided by the Republican House of Representatives.  I believe that Romney will win at least four of these six swing states.  If so, Romney will add between 38 and 64 electoral votes depending on which combination of four states he wins.  But Romney needs to win only one of Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan or both Iowa and Nevada to win the election.  There is even a possibility that Minnesota is in play with its 10 electoral votes enough for Romney to win.

If Romney sweeps all of these swing states, which is not highly likely, but is also not out of reach, the situation would be:

This would be a most wonderful reassurance that the American People might occasionally lose their marbles, but they have a tendency to relocate them eventually.  The amount of red in the county by county results will then be startling.

As I have noted before, the polls have weighted their results much too heavily toward Democrats by assuming there are either many more of them than Republicans or by assuming they are more likely to go to the polls to vote.  I believe that the Rasmussen and more recent Gallup attempts to identify the relative numbers of Democrats, Republicans, and Independent voters are very close to the actual case and the 2008 breakdown of voter affiliations are not applicable.  There are more Republicans than Democrats now and they will go to the polls in larger numbers than the Democrats will.

Romney still has a large, typical Republican advantage with male voters and Obama's 2008 advantage with female voters has almost disappeared.  Romney has a large advantage with Independent voters.  Obama is hoping for more black and Hispanic voters in this election than in 2008.  This is not going to happen.  In fact, there will be fewer black and Hispanic voters in this election.  They have been hit much harder by unemployment and some are concerned with Obama's stances on issues of religious belief.  His percentage of black voters voting will be lower.  Also, more Democrats than last time and more than usual will crossover and vote for Romney.  Republicans have a tradition of less crossover voting for Democrats and fewer than usual will do so this time.  18 - 29 year olds still favor Obama heavily by 55% to 36% of likely voters, but 9% of likely voters in that group are undecided.  Only 48% of these young voters say they will definitely vote and those voting for Romney are more likely to vote.

While the economy, ObamaCare, energy policies, the level of government spending, and the deficit will all cost Obama most heavily, the last of the undecided voters are being well pushed toward Romney by the Obama disgrace in failing to protect the Ambassador and others in the Benghazi consulate and then lying about the situation.  Those still undecided will almost all vote for Romney.  Consequently, it now appears that Romney will win 4 to 6% more of the popular vote than Obama.  That will translate into a substantial win in the Electoral College vote.

A Rational Examination of the October Employment Report

We are now three years into the Great Socialist Recession.  This is much the longest recession since I began paying attention to national events when I was five years old in 1952.  Yes, I actually watched the Democrat and Republican National Conventions with a great deal of interest in 1952.  But back to the present and the employment results for October 2010.  First of all, when deep into a very long recession, the most talked about number, the unemployment rate, is meaningless.  One has to dig deeper into the numbers to understand what is going on with the critical jobs situation.  We will do that.  When we do, we will find that there is much less to crow about than the Wall Street Journal and Fox Business News thinks there is.  Speculation that this is going to help Obama's re-election is way premature.  If it does, there is no Justice in these United States of America.

But first, here are the numbers we need to gain that understanding:

These are not the seasonally adjusted employment numbers.  I do not use them.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced with the October Report that they had revised the number of employed people for the months of August and September.  They were talking about the seasonally adjusted number.  The September number of those actually employed in September in the October Report is the same as the number from the September Report and the same as in my table of a month ago.  Apparently the formula for making the seasonal adjustments is what changed!  Frankly, any such formula this far into a recession is likely to be meaningless.

It does not mean much if a few jobs are added, when the number is much, much smaller than the increase in adults of working age.  The number of non-institutionalized Americans of working age increased by 208,000 from September to October.  Some 67.49% of these potential new workers would want jobs if employment were as available and desirable as it was in January 2000.  140,379 additional jobs would be needed to provide the jobs they would want.  But, note that the actual number of net additional jobs was only about 31,000.  This is bad, bad news.  Not only have none of the many previously unemployed been put back to work, but few of the additional people of working age have prospects of getting jobs either.

This is such a discouraging situation that the number of people reported as unemployed went down by 237,000 people when the number of employed went up by only 31,000!  206,000 more people gave up looking for work in October.  Despite the loss of 204,000 jobs in September, 619,000 people gave up looking in September.  One would think the 204,000 newly unemployed would have been added to the 619,000 to make an unemployed number in September of 823,000!  Similarly, 378,000 fewer people were looking for work in August than in July, despite there being 215,000 fewer jobs in August.  Clearly the August report should have had 593,000 more people looking for work.  This is just one disaster after another.

Using the employment level of January 2000 as a benchmark for the number of jobs needed to give everyone who would want a reasonable job such a job, we are lacking 21,235,000 jobs now.  At the time when the Great Socialist Recession started in December 2007 or just after, we already had a shortfall in jobs compared to January 2000 of 5,334,000.  From December 2007 to now, the number of full-time missing jobs has increased by another 10,212,000 jobs.  The 6-7 November 2010 Wall Street Journal front page article incorrectly reports a smaller number of lost jobs, namely 8.4 million.  Perhaps they are only counting people put out of a job and not counting those who have had no opportunity to ever hold a job.  To understand the weakness of the economy, we have to understand that the massive growth of governments throughout the last decade has transferred massive wealth from the private sector that creates jobs to the governments, which do not create jobs.  The economy had already suffered one-third of the decade's total job loss in December 2007.  The Great Socialist Recession then caused the other two-thirds of the huge total job loss of about 15,546,000 in the decade.

The Wall Street Journal article notes that at the "job creation" rate of October, it would take 50 months to replace the lost 8.4 million positions.  Well let's see.  8.4 million divided by 31,000 is 271 months!  What are they talking about?  Probably some phantom seasonally adjusted job growth.  As we noted above, the one month increase in the job age population should require another 140,000 or so jobs to accommodate the population growth.  An infinite amount of time will never provide those jobs at a rate of 31,000 new jobs in a month.  Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve Chairman told college students in Jacksonville, Florida that

And as a result, the unemployment rate, if at all, is coming down very, very slowly."

I sure am happy he put in that "if at all" qualifier, but one can clearly see that he was creating a very rosy picture compared to the reality.  He should have said that it is a good thing many of you will have college degrees, because those who do not will never get a job and even many of you with college degrees will not.

Of course many of those jobs are missing because of the minimum wage laws.  Many more are missing because ObamaCare has convinced many employers not to hire due to its costs and the fact that it is not an intelligible law.  It is too complicated to deal with if you employ 45, 55, 100, or 200 people.  Only the multinational corporations may have the manpower to deal with it and to apply, as McDonald's and Boeing have, to be exempted from its provisions.  Other large corporations are applying for exemptions from the high costs of ObamaCare already, but how can a corporation know if such exemptions will be granted?  Smaller companies have no idea how to apply and have less hope of having the clout to be given exemptions.  Many companies will just decide to sub-contract tasks or do without manpower.  Sometimes they can substitute machines for people.  Sometimes they just decide to have a widget made in China or India instead of hiring a new employee who will force them into the ObamaCare morass.

The costs of financial businesses are up due to Dodd-Franks regulations, so we can hardly expect them to hire.  The EPA is promising draconian fossil fuel cost increases following their insane ruling that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, so power companies, industries using power, and transportation companies are going to see their costs go up.  They do not know how much.  The EPA was waiting until after the elections to fry them with those costs.  The People will have much less money to spend too, because the costs of almost all goods and services will go up when the cost of using energy goes up.  Then there is the fact that businessmen still do not know what their tax rates will be in January, unless they are a corporation.  The corporations do know that their 2nd highest in the OECD tax rate of 35% will be the highest rate in the OECD in 2011.  Investors face many new problems in 2011 with capital gains taxes going up by one-third and interest and dividends being taxed at the individual marginal tax rates of up to 39.6%.  This will be a strong disincentive for job creating investments this year and thereafter.

Since the Democrats took control of both houses of Congress in 2007, there has been no sign of tax sanity at all in the federal government.  If Obama is yanked from office in the 2012 elections and the Senate is controlled by the Republicans, there will finally be a chance that our very excessive taxes can be brought under control, so jobs can once again be created.  The ObamaCare and EPA carbon dioxide threats will have to be dealt with as well.  Critically, the federal, state, and local governments will all have to reign in their profligate spending.  The deficits and the printing of about $1.75 trillion to add to the pre-recession $0.8 trillion cannot go on.  Jobs are not created in a world gone insane.  Of course, the USA has gone more insane than most of the OECD nations, so most of the job growth will occur in other nations until we address our many problems.

Meanwhile, blacks, most of whom are ever so loyal to Obama, are suffering an unemployment rate of 15.7% compared to a white unemployment rate of 8.8%.  Hispanics, more commonly Democrats also, are enjoying the Obama unemployment rate of 12.6%.  Some blacks and some Hispanics must be starting to think about where their allegiance should lie.  Perhaps it should be with the party more friendly to the job-creating private sector.

Obama Administration Finally Reports October Unemployment

Not since the aftermath of Jimmy Carter's rampant inflation, which followed Nixon's price controls fiasco, have we seen such unemployment as that engineered by Obama and the Democrat Congress.  Yes, there was a major increase in unemployment under Bush and the Democrat Congress with considerable help from the Federal Reserve, but we would be recovering from that were it not for the remarkable ability of Obama and an energized socialist Democrat leadership in the House and Senate with their large majorities to create a horrible business climate.

Obama and henchmen would have us believe that our biggest problems are health care and man-made global warming.  And maybe that we have too few workers paying union dues and far too many workers in the private sector rather than the public sector.  Meanwhile, the private sector still employs most Americans, but it is employing fewer and fewer of them.  The official, but understated, unemployment rate at the end of October was an astounding 10.2%!  No wonder any hint of such a large increase was suppressed by the administration prior to the election on Tuesday.  This is the U.S.'s highest unemployment rate since April 1983, 26 years ago.  We have had job losses for 22 straight months.

Obama is conducting a string orchestra in a mad fiddling contest with the devil, the likes of which we have never heard or seen.  Nancy Pelosi is first fiddle and Harry Reid is second fiddle of the Congressional section, which is filled out with the fascist socialists of the Congress.  On the other side of the string orchestra are the Marxist and Maoist Commissars and Czars of his administration section.  They are all fiddling madly to celebrate and encourage the burning of the American private sector and that fable of a Constitution decreeing limited powers for government and that silly notion that individuals have sovereign rights.  They are laughing gleefully as they play the devil's tune.

Since December 2007, the U.S. has lost 7.3 million jobs, but we will all be delighted to know that Obama says he saved 640,000 jobs with the stimulus bill earlier this year.  Let's see, then $787 billion of stimulus created 640,000 jobs at $1.23 million per job.  It is good for people to have a work ethic and to want to work, but it sure is rich to charge taxpayers $1.23 million per job!  Or am I being unfair here?  After all, only about a quarter of the Stimulus Bill appropriations have been spent.  But, then why should we give the government any credit at all for taxpayer money spent just in time to buy as many votes as possible just before the 2010 elections?  Even in terms of the money spent, these would be very expensive jobs, at about $307,500 apiece.  The private sector would usually produce at least 6 or 7 new jobs with so much capital to invest and spend.  But Obama and the Marxists know so little about business and economics that they do not have enough sense not to shout about their "great job creation accomplishment."

So, we now have 15.7 million would-be workers unemployed.  Many of them have been unemployed for more than six months, a record 35.6% of them.  Before the recession, 63% of adults worked, but now only 58.5% work.  The Democrats have championed the little guy, those without a high school diploma, into 15.5% unemployment.  Unemployment for those with the high school diploma is a mere 11.2%.  15.7% of blacks are unemployed and 13.1% of Hispanics are also.  This is very effective support for these Democrat-favored minorities by the Democrats.  Somehow, being anti-business and anti-wealthy people, is not creating the jobs their supposed constituents need.  One should be arguing that being anti-business and anti-wealthy people is the equivalent of being anti-black and anti-Hispanic.  The private sector lost about 558,000 jobs, but the public sector lost no jobs.  The public sector and its employees is now being supported by many fewer people with private sector jobs and we should add the public sector to the enemies of blacks and Hispanics.

Those who have given up on finding jobs and those working part-time who wish to work or work more are now 17.5% of the available workforce.  The total hours worked fell another 0.2% in October and the average workweek is now a mere 33 hours. But, average hourly wages are up 2.4% in the last year, perhaps because job losses have been higher among the more poorly paid, who are usually the least productive workers and the first to be let go in hard times.  These workers are also the more likely to be intimidated or persuaded to join a labor union, which would further hurt a company's productivity.  Thus, it makes still more sense to let such workers go when unions are being favored by government.

There was some good news.  Productivity went up per employed worker at a 9.5% annual rate.  Unemployment decreased from 4.9% to 4.7% for those with college degrees.  Managers and professionals were being hired, so their unemployment rate fell from 5.2% to 4.7%.  The technology, education, and health care sectors were hiring.  Temporary workers were also hired.  But the situation was woeful still for construction, manufacturing, and service and retail.

Apparently, increasing taxes, deficits, government spending, regulations that serve no purpose, restricting international trade, taking over industries, dictating executive compensation, crippling oil and gas exploration and development, threatening the coal industry with extinction, and restricting fossil fuel energy use is not the way to produce jobs.  In fact, it is a very good way to kill jobs.  This is the Marxist, Maoist, fascist way.  The European socialist countries have had 10% unemployment rates very frequently.  Obama has imported these unemployment rates to the U.S.  The strange thing is, the Europeans have been turning away from some of their failed policies, even as Obama turns us toward them.  He is talking about increasing corporate tax rates and those on wealthier individuals, even as most European countries have been reducing those rates in recent years.  We and the Japanese now have the highest corporate tax rates in the advanced world.  It is hurting both of us badly.  But, lowering corporate tax rates just does not fit the Marxist rhetoric or the populist demagogue's style.