Ice Rinks, Schools and Gangs: Liberals don't really want to fix problems...

As Donald Trump seeks to throw a wrench in the works of how government works... or more often, doesn't, we should be prepared to listen to Democrats and liberals wail at every move.  Just look at the cries that welcomed the nomination of a climate change skeptic to run the borg known as the EPA.  Remember, Trump's the guy who, after NYC wasted $13 million over two years failing to renovate Wollman Rink, went in and accomplished the task in 4 months for $2.25 million...

The reality is, Democrats and liberals rarely want government to actually improve things or solve problems... Sure, they say they say they want to improve schools, create more jobs, and reduce crime, but, they don’t really. And how do we know this? Because of the policies they advocate.

One place where this is obvious is in education. Liberals constantly advocate for an increase in education budgets, but there is a zero correlation between that spending and better performance. The United States spends more per pupil on education than any country in the developed world other than Switzerland, yet somehow American students rank in the twenties or thirties when compared to that same group.

And this is not new… Between 1970 and 2006 the per student cost of a K-12 education in the United States tripled while test scores remained flat. For the left, improving education means spending more money, not improving the actual education of students. That increase of money involves not only teacher’s and teacher salaries as they would have us think, but more ominously, administrators and non classroom personnel.  Between 1950 and 2009 the number of students in the United States increased by 96% and the number of teachers increased by 386% while the number of administrators increased by 702%! And there’s more! In 21 states across the country, there are actually more non-classroom personnel in schools than there are teachers! In Texas, over the last 20 years while the student population grew by 37% the non-classroom staff grew four times as fast, surging by 172%.

All of this increase in spending and personnel might be reasonable if students were learning more and scoring better on tests, but they're not, particularly in the biggest urban school districts where most of the money is spent. And of course it’s the big cities where liberals have a virtual stranglehold on education… But then calls for education spending isn’t about education, it’s about government jobs, union dues, and ultimately Democrat campaign contributions.

Another example of liberals not really being interested in the welfare of the people they claim to support can be seen in California where immigration advocates are seeking to have the state destroy CalGang, a database compiled over years that contains the names and information on 150,000 suspected gang members across the state - or at least put it in some inaccessible lockbox.

Why would liberals want this database destroyed? So that Donald Trump can’t access it. Still, why?Because a state auditor observed last year that approximately 13% of the database represented names that were “inappropriately included”. That includes names that should never have been added in the first place, names that should have been taken off for being “inaccurate”, or youths whose parents were not properly notified prior to their being added. In addition the database might be sexist and racist because it’s 93% male and disproportionately minority as 64.9% of its database is Hispanic and 20.5% black.

Activists don’t want Donald Trump to be able to access the information so that hen't can fulfill his campaign promise of deporting illegal aliens who have committed crimes.

Now think about that… this database of gang members, which even by the auditor’s account, is at least 87% accurate, should be “blocked from federal access” because of the possibility someone wrongly included might get deported. Nevermind that being a suspected gang member isn’t sufficient to get someone thrown out of the country. They still need to be here illegally. Nevermind that police agencies across the state are constantly reviewing the database and removing names that are not supposed to be there or no longer supposed to be included. In liberalese, if it’s not 100% perfect then it can’t be used... and even if it were, we can imagine they'd find another rationale for blocking access.

So in a world where gangs are responsible for 80% of all crime and 50% of violent crime, liberals want to mask the membership in gangs of approximately 150,000 Californians so that a president who promised to deport criminal illegal aliens can’t do so because of the possibility that 20,000 of those names maybe shouldn't have been included.  Of course that makes sense in a state where there were 1,861 murders last year... and probably half of those were committed by gangs and gang members.

So here’s the thing… rather than concern themselves with the families of the approximately 1,000 people murdered by gang members in California in 2015, liberal activists would prefer to keep the imperfect database out of the hands of Donald Trump because of the slight chance he might deport someone whose inclusion in the database was possibly erroneous! Liberals would rather protect illegal alien criminals than protect the victims of their crime... most of whom are the same Hispanics they are seeking to "protect" in the first place!  But there's not nearly as much fundraising to be had from advocating for murder victims' families as there is for leading demonstrations against government "injustice" against innocent undocumented workers who went through hell to come to America so they could make a better life for themselves only to be unjustly threatened with deportation by a racist president.  

As the next four years unfold and liberals seek to thwart Donald Trump -  the hero of Wollman Rink - at every juncture, keep in mind that their goal is never really achieving the outcomes they claim to advocate, whether it’s better education, lowering crime or virtually anything else. If it was they would abandon liberal sophistry and start advocating policies that actually work. But as those rarely increase their power, their bank accounts and ultimately their control, so don’t count on it.

Government programs have accomplished what slavery and Jim Crow could not... they've destroyed the black family.

For those of you who have never looked at my picture, I’m a white guy. Given the subject of today's piece I might as well get it out of the way. In addition, other than participating in ROTC at Florida A&M University (an historically black institution), spending a semester in Florida State’s Degraff Hall dormitory (at that time the dorm established primarily for “African American students”) and minoring in Black Studies while at FSU, I don’t have any particular experience in what one might call black culture. (I use the word culture in the general sense, recognizing that not every member of a particular group shares all aspects of that culture.)

I do have eyes however, and much of what I see of black America is not good. I say that not as an indictment of black people. On the contrary. I don’t think blacks are any better or worse than anyone else on the planet or in the country.

That being said, I put pen to paper on this topic because of a series of disturbing headlines I’ve seen over the last month combined with something Walter Williams recently said on John Stossel’s show. Over the Memorial Day weekend Drudge ran a series of headlines about chaos breaking out across the country: Chicago, Charlotte, Boston, Miami, Nashville… The common factor across each of these melees was that the problems involved large groups of black teens and young adults. These stories dovetailed with numerous recent accounts of “Flash Mobs” across the country (Washington, Las Vegas, St. Paul) where similar groups of black youths descended on a store of one sort or another and brazenly walked off with hundreds or thousands of dollars of merchandise.

Something struck me about the people whom I was reading about or watching on video… they seemed to have no appreciation for personal property. It seemed to me that the violence and mayhem being displayed was the result of people who had an entitlement mentality where they felt they could do whatever they wanted, could take whatever they wanted, regardless of the consequences on anyone else, simply because they could. One asks how do people end up with this type of mentality. The answer was obvious: the government’s nanny state.

Then Walter Williams crystallized my thinking when he made the observation that government programs had accomplished what slavery could not do and what Jim Crow laws could not do… they destroyed the black family. The numbers are stark. Williams points out that up until the 1940’s between 75 & 90 percent of all black children were being raised in two parent homes while today the number is less than 1/3. He continued, pointing out that the illegitimacy rate amongst blacks was 18% in 1940 but ballooned to 72.5% in 2008. In a 1985 documentary he suggested that government programs, with their “good intentions” had led America’s black families into Hell.

The recent news stories about riots and gangs and flash mobs are simply the symptom of the Hell Williams discussed. There are now millions of government supported and government non-educated black youth (and in many cases their parents before them) who simply have no understanding of the concept of individual responsibility, private property or work. The result is exactly as one would expect. As Williams points out, “If you subsidize something you get more of it” i.e. dependency, illegitimacy, poverty… and most brutally, if you tax (or regulate) something you’ll get less of it… i.e. jobs.

Culture of course is different than people and there are many black people and families who do not fit into this culture. Regardless of whether or not one agrees with the notion of a black culture in the first place, one must agree that the state of black America is difficult. Bill Jones, the Chairman of the Black Studies program at FSU back in the 1980’s once said that he could make a very strong argument that blacks in America were better off before the civil rights movement. His primary argument was built on the loss of role models in the black neighborhoods as most of the successful people moved out to the suburbs as soon as they could. Without those positive role models to show them how to act, who could the young people in those neighborhoods look to for guidance?

While that was not his position, he suggested a good argument could be made for it. He makes a valid point. Role models are always important for young people, but particularly for those growing up in difficult circumstances. Despite what Hollywood might want to suggest, data clearly demonstrate that growing up in a two parent home is one of the most powerful indicators of a child’s success in life. By ameliorating the financial burden of having children, by removing any correlation between individual responsibility and income, and most devastatingly of all, by making fathers superfluous, the liberal policies of the last five decades have destroyed the lives of millions of black Americans who make up what one may or may not want to characterize as black culture.

America is too great of a nation and the challenges of the 21st century are too many to leave any group behind. If America is going to survive and thrive well into the 21st century, it will require the entrepreneurial, creative and productive efforts of everyone, including her 40 million black citizens. Let's face it, we're in this together. Five decades of government policies have handicapped millions of black families and we’re seeing the consequences of those policies in headlines across the country. Perhaps the recent demonstration of that destruction playing itself out in front of news cameras and security cameras will be a catalyst to make black Americans reconsider their fealty to the Democratic Party and the big government programs that have wrought so much damage to their communities… One can only hope.