White Racism/Black Resentment

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  In one of their recent syndicated columns, Cokie and Steve Roberts discussed the firing of Shirley Sherrod, the African-American political appointee who was forced by the Obama administration to leave the Agriculture Department.  In their article they stated, ‘To equate black resentment against whites with white racism aimed at blacks dangerously ignores hundreds of years of American history’.  They go on to bemoan the fact that affirmative action is over and that ‘with an African-American in the White House, too many people seem to think that we have overcome our history’.  As Bernie Goldberg so aptly pointed out, ‘Liberals see just about everything through the prism of race’, and this is a classic example. 

          Perhaps one might excuse this kind of thinking from Cokie and Steve Roberts, both of whom could be suffering from that common malady of liberals, Elitist Guilt Disorder (EGD).  Cokie, the daughter of Congressman Hale Boggs, attended private schools and Wellesley College before beginning her career as a journalist with state-controlled NPR news.  Steve attended Harvard before beginning his career with the New York Times and US News and World Report.  Both now work for ABC News.

          It is wrong-headed thinking like this that wants to justify black racism against whites, while condemning white racism against blacks.  Sorry, but in 2010 white racism and black ‘resentment’ are one and the same.  Both are very wrong and equally wrong!  Such thinking also attempts to justify and make legal the discriminatory practice known as affirmative action.  Perhaps worst of all, it fails to recognize the harm that affirmative action does to those for whom it was designed to help.  At the very least, it robs the many deserving African-Americans of one of the greatest rewards of success…self-satisfaction.  Why should a successful black physician, for example, have to wonder for the rest of his career if every patient he tends to is wondering if he got into medical school only because the bar was lowered for him by affirmative action.

          There’s no question we still have a ways to go in improving race relations in the United States, but let’s not minimize the tremendous progress that has been made over the years.  What can we do to make things better?  Perhaps we could start by not dwelling on it so much and by encouraging all sides to not be so sensitive.  And how ‘bout we tone down the rhetoric a bit and say something nice about each other.  OK, I’ll start.  Don’t tell Cokie, but I always enjoy her on NPR.  Gee, with this kind of attitude, who knows, Shirley Sherrod might have been able to keep her job.

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The President’s Address

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PRESIDENT ADDRESSES WORLD

           Sounding more like Steve Urkel than the Commander-in-Chief, President Obama looked somehow out of place as he addressed the world this week from the Oval Office.  Reading a loosely organized speech with his trademark teleprompters discretely out of sight, he seemed to be reassuring the Taliban that he will begin withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan by July 2011 and that they need only hold out for a little while longer.

            Unabashedly taking credit for the success of the War in Iraq, he avoided mentioning that he had opposed it and that the triumph of good over evil in that fledgling republic was actually achieved in spite of him.  As a senator and a presidential candidate Mr. Obama worked diligently against our efforts in that war, because it detracted from what he considered to be the right war, the War in Afghanistan.  Well, Mr. President, the War in Afghanistan is now your war and you will actually be responsible for the outcome.  Let us hope that you understand how important it is for our country and the world to achieve another victory.

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The Welfare State

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ONE IN SIX AMERICANS ON THE DOLE

‘Ask not what you can do for your country.  Ask what your country can do for you.’

          Is this what it has come to since President Kennedy gave his famous speech in January 1961?  Recent reports indicate that one in six Americans are now on some kind of welfare.  Fifty million Americans are on Medicaid, the federal-state program for the poor.  At the end of the Eisenhower presidency in 1961 there were 45 domestic social programs.  By the end of the Johnson presidency in 1969 that number had risen to 435.  For all the billions of dollars spent since Johnson’s War on Poverty, the poverty rate in this country has essentially stayed the same. 

          No one denies that we need a safety net for those who truly cannot take care of themselves, but endless welfare programs simply don’t work and in many cases they are self-perpetuating.  But that hasn’t discouraged the liberals, who want to increase social spending by increasing taxes on those who would otherwise be creating jobs in this moribund (see WOW) economy.  And as George Bernard Shaw famously said, “A government with the policy to rob Peter to pay Paul can be assured of the support of Paul”.

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Managing a Budget: 101

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Budget Deficit vs National Debt 

          Each year the President presents a budget to Congress, but it is the Congress which ultimately decides how much money is actually spent and what it is spent on.  The deficit is the difference between the money the government takes in (mainly taxes) and what the government spends (including interest payments on debt) each year.  When there is a deficit, Treasury must borrow the money needed for the government to pay its bills.  For each dollar the current Democrat controlled Congress spends, 41 cents has to be borrowed! 

          The national debt is the total sum of the accumulated annual deficits.  Our current national debt of more than 13 trillion dollars ($13,000,000,000.00) means that every U.S. citizen owes more than $43,000.00 as their portion of this debt.  And this doesn’t even take into account unfunded obligations like medicare and social security which could add another 45 to 50 trillion dollars to the national debt.  Since the Democrats took control of Congress in 2007 the national debt has continued to increase by an average of more than 4 billion dollars per day!  It should be of great concern to every American that 50% of our national debt is owed to foreign lenders, like some of the OPEC nations and Communist China.

          During President Bush’s 6th year (2006) the Republican controlled 109th Congress was responsible for a deficit of $248,181,000.00 (248 billion dollars).  By 2008 the Democrat controlled 110th Congress had nearly doubled that to $458,555.00.  By 2009 with Democrats in control of both Congress and the White House, the deficit skyrocketed to $1,400,000,000.00 (1.4 trillion dollars)!  Because the national debt is the total sum of the accumulated annual deficits, the national debt increased by more than one third during that same period.  There appears to be no end in sight to this profligate spending by the left wing liberals in Congress, with two additional bills totally billions more in nonexistent dollars having just been passed.  Social spending is now the largest expense item in our federal budget. 

          Americans of all ages are deeply concerned about the mounting debt and the large amount of interest that we pay on that debt each year.  Unless this trend is reversed by voting these liberal politicians out of Congress in November, the young people of our country will be stuck paying off trillions of dollars in debt with higher tax rates and a diminished quality of life.  Perhaps that is why we are seeing increasing numbers of high school and college students challenging their liberal teachers in class and joining the conservative movement. 

          A national debt of 13 trillion dollars and growing is indeed a serious problem.  Worse yet is the specter of a complete failure of our economy.  Countries fail when the economy fails, as was most recently seen with the collapse of the former Soviet Union.  Sorry to point out that what we have been discussing is just the national debt and does not even take into consideration the out of control spending and mounting debts of state and local governments, many of whom are already bankrupt!

          It is an interesting historical fact that before 1974 Congress had no formal process for establishing a coherent budget.  When Republican President Richard Nixon refused to spend some of the money the Democrat controlled 93rd Congress had earmarked, Congress created the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to challenge him and direct control of the budget away from the president and toward Congress.  Imagine a president having the leadership to stand up to a spendthrift Congress and refuse to waste taxpayer’s money!

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