Four (Black) Cops Killed in Seven Days — Where’s the Outrage?
Welfare
Hot-Tub Conversations | Discussing Politics on Vacation
Well, my cruise to Hawaii and back (2013) went as well as one could expect. One of my favorite parts was being “buzzed” by the USS Vinson (Carrier) on our last sea day. Not only did we see a floating military airport, F-18’s, Sea-Hawks, and E-2C Hawkeyes… but we also saw a pod of whales and dolphins.
A great trip.
But I wouldn’t post just this on my blog… which is called “Religio-Political Talk”! I mean, Who cares about Hawaii!?
I wanted to recount a conversation, really a landslide of a conversation I had with an older gentleman (Walter) in a jacuzzi on board the ship. Now, many of the people on board were vets of some sort on a twilight cruise to Pearl Harbor… so political views lined up with most on board. Conversations — when political — were for the most part neutral or in agreement. And the many Canadians and Brits on board are suffering from the same political correctness in not dealing with immigration and Islamic radicals. We are in the same boat, so-to-speak. But while talking to a police officer from SoCal on vacation with his beautiful family, an older gentleman got into the jacuzzi and proceeded to blame — in general conversation — everything on Bush and Republicans. His ability to weave politics indiscriminately into conversation was amazing! I was impressed.
At first I decided to ignore the references, I took his age into account. However, after a while I caved and proceed to challenge him on many points he made. One topic was welfare, and I pointed out that more people are on food stamps than the population of Spain, he mentioned that many single mothers needed help… to which I used an analogy to help explain how social programs assisted in making single-parenthood an option.
I asked if he agreed with my analogy. He said yes. I then referenced shortly Thomas Sowell’s interaction with an official from the welfare administration and pointed out that in effect the government is doing precisely what my analogy he agreed with promotes… that is, making it very easy for men to choose to leave their families because they know the government will feed their children, pointing out — as Larry Elder points out — that 75% of black children are born into homes without a father. Mentioning that THIS is why the poverty and crime levels are so high in these neighborhoods. NOT because of racism as he had eluded to, but because of subsidizing irresponsibility and fatherlessness!
He also intimated that the banks were also racist in their ravaging the poor by loans for homes they couldn’t afford. I pointed out that Bush and McCain tried to reform Fannie and Freddie a total of 17-times and each time were shut down by Democrats. Walter, the gentleman in the hot-tub, hadn’t heard that before, and I mentioned that Bill Clinton himself blames the Democrats, while still others rewrite history.
Conversation went to education and educational costs. Here is where we had a sharp disagreement. Walter said the schools only get $5,000 or so per student to teach them. I mentioned that each student in L.A. gets about $13,000 spent on them. Actually, I was wrong, it is closer to $30,000 dollars a year. But every point of disagreement or complaint Walter had focused around racism. Which led me to my final point of the discussion with his. I asked him why he was so sensitive to the topic of race/racism. He responded that he had a family member who passed in a concentration camp during WWII, mentioning his Jewish roots. Awesome!
This led me to my favorite analogy, which I asked Walter to allow me time to build. He agreed, revealing ultimately his political inconsistencies:
- This post has an updated analogy incorporating Trump, here: Democratic Antisemitism/Racism
He confirmed my suspicion. I then shared my knowledge of Obama.
…continuing…
Do you know the next thing out of Walter’s mouth was?
✫ “Didn’t Bush speak in a church that forbid interracial marriage?”
I responded that no, it was a speech at Bob Jones University…
At this point Walter started to get out of the hot-tub finishing with “well, that’s just your opinion.” (Meaning, my carefully laid out facts and years of study combined with an analogy was hogwash.) Walter went his way, and even avoided me when he saw me in the international caffe — even though our conversation was calm, rational, and reasoned. I even asked him permission twice to make my analogies, being polite and respecting his age. Walter is a great example of how Democrats ignore following their own concerns to their logical conclusions, when applied to their own candidate. Sad.
Egalitarianism Used Against Itself ~ Welfare Jizza for Jihad
This is an older story via The Business Insider (2013):
A Muslim preacher has been secretly recorded explaining to followers how to receive government assistance they can use to fund a Muslim holy war.
Calling it a “Jihadi Allowance,” cleric Anjem Choundary, 45, has four kids, brings in £25,000, or just under $39,000 U.S. in benefits himself, and says that this is the way it is supposed to work according to Islamic law.
Recorded by both the U.K. Sun and Telegraph, Choundary says:
- “We are on Jihad Seekers Allowance, we take the Jizya (protection money paid to Muslims by non-Muslims) which is ours anyway.
- “The normal situation is to take money from the [non-Muslims] isn’t it? So this is the normal situation.”
- “They give us the money. You work, give us the money. Allah Akbar, we take the money. Hopefully there is no one from the DSS (Department of Social Security) listening.”
- “Ah, but you see people will say you are not working. But the normal situation is for you to take money from the Kuffar (non-Muslim) So we take Jihad Seeker’s Allowance.”
Choudray goes on in a separate videos to mock English workers performing 9 to 5 jobs, and tells followers that some of the most famous Islamic figures worked only one or two days a week.
“The rest of the year they were busy with jihad [holy war] and things like that,” he says, according to The Telegraph. “People will say, ‘Ah, but you are not working.’”
“But the normal situation is for you to take money from the kuffar [non-believers].”
“So we take Jihad Seeker’s Allowance. You need to get support.”
He the tells a crowd of about 30 followers: “We are going to take England — the Muslims are coming.”….
It’s OK to Leave the Plantation ~ Bundy & Black Conservatives
When I first heard Cliven Bundy’s remarks about the “ghetto” and how he thought “Negroes” picken’ cotton was better than what they have… I was saddened. I had already come to the conclusion that Cliven was not entirely correct with his view of Federalism, but that the Federal government was wrongly pressing an issue of importance for those who wish to shrink government. And remember, Bundy is the last of over 50 ranchers/farmers in his area whom were effectively chased out of business by Federal regulations.
I still think a vested interest in what went on (and is going on in a state where the Federal government is in control of 81% of the land in that state) in the larger sense on the Bundy Ranch deserves our attention. An earlier post explains why we should care: Confused About the Ongoing Bundy Ranch Debacle? Read On…
There are some good (macro) signs coming from this, and that is that the states are eyeballing Federalism in the classical sense. And directly related to the “Bundy Standoff” our side of the country is looking at curtailing Federal control of soooo much property:
ALL THAT ASIDE, the statements I heard from Bundy were hard to hear. BUT, I remembered an older article (2009) by Walter Williams called “Race Talk” in which he explains that over the years what “African-Americans” have been politely called has changed:
- What to call black people has to be confusing to white people. Having been around for 73 years, I have been through a number of names. Among the polite ones are: colored, Negro, Afro-American, black, and now African-American. Among those names, African-American is probably the most unintelligent.
So even though Cliven Bundy was calling a segment of our body-politic, “Negro,” that wasn’t the issue that worried me. But before drawing a final conclusion on the matter I chose to wait a few days to see what would flesh out.
I am glad I did, because the legacy media pushed a narrative (see three good critiques of this narrative: here, here, and here) different from the larger body of evidence. Gateway Pundit, Alfonzo Rachel, Kira Davis, and Larry Elder helped trigger in my mind what Paul Harvey said was “the rest of the story.” So lets start the journey of what Cliven was saying that is no different in its substance (just not delivery) from what Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Larry Elder, C. Mason Weaver, , Star Parker, Carol Swain, Allen West, Deneen Borelli, and others have been saying for a long time. In fact, here are some of the covers I wish to show:
All of the above books and names are people of color saying in a more erudite manner what this po-dunk farmer said. However, many of the above authors call Big-Government what it is to the black community: plantation.
Dr. Sowell made this thinking clear with his debate about the dynamics of welfare with then Pennsylvania Secretary of Welfare, Helen O’Banion (1980). The black family was more intact during the hardest times of our nations history for them, but now 70% of black kids are born to single mothers because the father abandons them because the state will cover his ass. Sowell makes the point that the black family was better during even slavery.
But lets assume the worse fears about Cliven Bundy. Let us posit that he really is racist. What affect does that have on either the issue at hand a) government overreach, or b), your personal life. Government overreach has more possibility of affecting me (all of us), and the guys that can come to your door are carrying AR-15’s. Cliven has no affect on me and will never interfere with my personal well-being.
But I do not think Mr. Bundy is racist like Donald Sterling, if you take all he said IN CONTEXT. Something the left leaning, race-card throwing media does not. So, let us start this journey first with Kira Davis, in all her glory (sorry Kira, looked like a long night with the kids):
Kira makes the point well, that even if Mr. Bundy was a racist… so what. That is a micro issue, the macro issue is whether the law in question that allowed heavily weaponized federal agents to start killing cattle in mass graves is just. This is the point made well by Zo Nation (Alfonzo Rachel) in what I still regard as MachoSauce:
Okay, we have seen that in the BIG picture, even if Cliven Bundy WAS racist, it has no affect on your personal life, and government overreach is much more damaging to the individual. But lets get back to the issue Bundy was making. Larry Elder, in a rather long segment I edited (video included in Larry’s audio), shows that in context, and rather against the New York Times truncating the quote to make Mr. Bundy out as a villain:
You see, in context, we find the narrative to be a bit different than what our handlers want us to see.
Gateway Pundit was stellar in their posting on this matter — NY Times EDITED Cliven Bundy’s Controversial Remarks:
Liberals constant attempts to silence debate and free speech with the caterwauling cries of “racism” were best summed up by this Gateway video posted on George Will.
“Liberalism has a kind of Tourette’s syndrome these days. It’s just constantly saying the word racism and racist. There’s an old saying in the law: If you have the law on your side, argue the law; if you have the facts on your side, argue the facts; if you have neither, pound the table. This is pounding the table. There’s a kind of intellectual poverty now. Liberalism hasn’t had a new idea since the 1960′s except Obamacare and the country doesn’t like it. […] So what do you do? You say anyone who criticizes us is a ‘racist’. It’s become a joke…”
Cliven Bundy scares the Left because the Left has failed at scaring Bundy—who doesn’t scare easily and stands up for what is constitutionally protected. The released EDITED video is more pounding of the table to avoid arguing the facts.
Liberal Media Matters and NY Times brought down Cliven Bundy with the release of this EDITED VIDEO HERE on his controversial comments. Below is the context of the FULL video in which he mentions the Government is the master of enslavement. He explains at the beginning and emphasizes again at the end of the video (which was edited out by the Left because they don’t blame government).
Many conservatives like Sean Hannity were quick to jump in and condemn Bundy’s racist statements, rightfully so. But maybe Hannity missed the discussions on many of the same ideas, admittedly expressed differently than Bundy, shared by great minds such as Walter E. Williams, Ben Carson, Rush Limbaugh, Allen West, and other great conservative minds.
Does the media find Walter E. Williams, Ben Carson, and Allen West ”repugnant” and “beyond despicable” for making similar points as Cliven Bundy? The fact remains this fight is still about GOVERNMENT OVERREACH—not about Bundy.
Here’s a sample of what Walter Williams has said on the subject [I edited the longer video to the relevant remarks]:
And what about Ben Carson who ranted about the massive welfare program known as Obamacare in the video below. Is Ben Carson repugnant, too? No doubt a racist in the eyes of the NY Times.
Read all of Gateways post — well worth it.
So, the conclusion I can come to with all the relevant information is a) Bundy is most likely not racist, but only God can see his heart; b) Mr. Bundy is right about calling a “spade-a-spade,” big government entitlement programs has created what progressive hero said it would do:
How is this a “vote pump”? ~ paying for those to stay unemployed or not worry about their family and continue to vote for the party that pays them:
Paying for failure, and a new type of slavery… Western style.
Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill on `Ruination`
Tom Bethel, “Ruination,” The American Spectator, December 2013, Vol. 46 (no. 10), page 44.
….Over generations the U.S. has accumulated plenty of capital (and I don’t just mean our assets). Subconsciously, the president and his allies seem to have decided: “Let’s go ahead and spend that capital for our own political advantage.” The country will survive. “Social justice,” meaning equality, is what they say they want. If getting there means blowing some capital, well, only heartless right-wingers will object.
Here are some recent figures published by Robert J. Samuelson of the Washington Post:
✦ In 1955, defense spending was 62 percent of federal outlays and spending on “human resources” (the welfare state) was 22 percent. By 2012 the figures were reversed; welfare was 66 percent, defense 19 percent. Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, Pell grants and Social Security’s disability program are all postwar creations.
The metastasis of the welfare state has been enabled by something that would have amazed Adam Smith. Earn a decent living and you will pay thousands of tax dollars into the Treasury, and have one vote. Receive food stamps, housing subsidies, and child support from the government, perhaps to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars, and you too will enjoy one vote. You probably won’t owe any income taxes either. It’s a formula for instability.
John Stuart Mill saw the danger of a system like ours as far back as 1861:
✦ The receipt of parish relief [welfare] should be a peremptory disqualification for the franchise. He who cannot by his labor suffice for his own support has no claim to the privilege of helping himself to the money of others. By becoming dependent on the remaining members of the community for actual subsistence, he abdicates his claim to equal rights with them in other respects.
And remember, Mill was the big progressive of his time. If a politician made that comment today, it would qualify as a hate crime. Yet we keep hearing how far to the right we have moved.
Mill couldn’t have known how much worse things would get, both in Britain and in its former colonies. Consider the U.S. budget. For 51 of the last 60 years the government has spent more than it has taken in; in the latest year, $700 billion more. Total debt now exceeds $17 trillion, and unfunded liabilities (including such details as future Social Security payments) run into the hundreds of trillions. The Ponzi scheme is sustained by printing money to keep interest rates low. It is an unstable structure, to put it mildly….
`Jaw Hits Floor` ~ 3.7 Trillion in 5-Years!
New research from the Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee shows that over the last 5 years, the U.S. has spent about $3.7 trillion on welfare. Here’s a chart (above), showing that spending versus transportation, education, and NASA spending:
“We have just concluded the 5th fiscal year since President Obama took office. During those five years, the federal government has spent a total $3.7 trillion on approximately 80 different means-tested poverty and welfare programs. The common feature of means-tested assistance programs is that they are graduated based on a person’s income and, in contrast to programs like Social Security or Medicare, they are a free benefit and not paid into by the recipient,” says the minority side of the Senate Budget Committee.
“The enormous sum spent on means-tested assistance is nearly five times greater than the combined amount spent on NASA, education, and all federal transportation projects over that time. ($3.7 trillion is not even the entire amount spent on federal poverty support, as states contribute more than $200 billion each year to this federal nexus—primarily in the form of free low-income health care.)
“Because the welfare budget is so fragmented—food stamps are only one of 15 federal programs that provide food assistance—it makes effective oversight nearly impossible, at the same time disguising the scope of the budget from both taxpayers and lawmakers alike. For instance, it is easier for anti-reform lawmakers to oppose food stamp savings by obscuring the fact that a household receiving food stamps is often simultaneously eligible for a myriad of federal aid programs including free cash assistance, subsidized housing, free medical care, free child care, and home energy assistance.
“In the UK, six of the nation’s welfare programs have been consolidated into a single credit and total benefits have been capped at £26,000 (about $42,100 per family) in an effort to both improve standards and decrease net expenditures. A similar reform concept in the United States—combining welfare spending into a single credit—would still result in a surprisingly large welfare benefit while reducing expenditures and allowing for reforms that encourage self-sufficiency. For instance, a CATO study found that an average household in the District of Columbia currently receiving the six largest federal welfare benefits (Medicaid, TANF, SNAP, etc.) receives assistance with a converted cash value of $43,000. In Hawaii, it’s $49,000. Hypothetically, if net benefits from these myriad programs were combined into a single credit and capped at even 95 percent of that very large amount, it would save taxpayers billions while enabling reforms to promote self-sufficiency, reduce the penalty for working, and make the system fairer for taxpayers.”
Food Stamps
Via GayPatriot:
☠ It’s not a “safety net”, it’s a cultural phenomenon…
CATO Study: Welfare Pays More Than Minimum Wage In Many States
Via Gateway Pundit
Last week, the Cato Institute released an analysis of the total level of welfare benefits by state called “The Work Versus Welfare Trade-Off” by Michael Tanner and Charles Hughes. The analysis claims the current welfare system acts as a disincentive “because welfare benefits are tax-free, their dollar value was greater than the amount of take-home income a worker would receive from an entry-level job.”
In particular, this study seeks to determine the approximate level of benefits that a typical welfare family, consisting of a single mother with two children, might receive, and to compare those benefits with the wages that a recipient would need to earn in order to take home an equivalent income
Even after accounting for Earned Income Tax Credit, welfare currently pays more than a minimum wage job in 35 states. Welfare in 42 states exceed the Federal Poverty Level and District of Columbia, Massachusetts, and Hawaii pays more than twice the poverty level.
[….]
Looking at Welfare Benefits Packages as a whole, the states with the largest welfare packages are:
1. Hawaii- $49,175
2. District of Columbia- $43,099
3. Mass- $42,515
4. Connecticut- $38,761
5. New jersey- $38,728
6. Rhode Island- $38,632
7. New York $38,004
The full report can be read here
Thomas Sowell in the 70`s Mentioned the Below ~ Equality, Affirmative Action and Welfare
109-Million Private Sector Jobs Supporting 88-Million Government Jobs/Welfare ~ Talking Points Memo (12/6/12)
Buying Your Vote… since 1933
This above on the “lower end” of The Vote Pump ~ Bill Whittle explains how much this REALLY costs:
Battle of Campaign Ads and Truth! Welfare Reform Gutted, Truly
Thanks firstly to Daily RushBo!
First I will post the Romney Campaign Ad talking about the gutting of welfare reform the Republicans battled so resolutely for during the Clinton years. Then I will post the OFFICIAL Obama campaign response ad, followed by Rush Limbaugh playing audio of the the author of the reform bill that Clinton signed into law, Robert Rector. I will close this video/audio montage with “The Hammer” quelling the idea that reforming welfare is racist. Enjoy, and learn these quick responses to answer your Democratic friends, neighbors, family members and co-workers.
OFFICIAL ROMNEY AD:
OFFICIAL OBAMA RESPONSE:
RUSH LIMBAUGH PLAYING AUDIO FROM THE 1996 BILL’S AUTHOR ROBERT RECTOR:
“THE HAMMER” SMACKS DOWN RACE CARD RELATED TO THIS TOPIC:
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