Transatlantic Politics

The race card is becoming an increasingly deadly play during the current political season in America.  From former Democratic VP Nominee Geraldine Ferraro’s comments (perceived as racist by some) to Michelle Obama’s race-tinged response about how proud she felt to see her black husband in contention to be the Democratic nominee, race has become a hot topic (again) in America:

The most recent race-related twist to the U.S. presidential campaign has surfaced as revelations of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s comments have surfaced.  Rev. Wright has been Barack Obama’s pastor in Chicago for the past 20 years.  Obama has said that Wright served as the inspiration for the title of Obama’s best-selling The Audacity of Hope.  Rev. Wright married Barack & Michelle Obama and baptised their three children:

In response to such statements, Pat Buchanan, who tried unsuccessfully to secure the Republican presidential nomination in 1992 & 1996, had the following to say:

How would Barack explain to his press groupies why he sat silent in a pew for 20 years as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright delivered racist rants against white America for our maligning of Fidel and Gadhafi, and inventing AIDS to infect and kill black people?

How would he justify not walking out as Wright spewed his venom about "the U.S. of K.K.K. America," and howled, "God damn America!"

My hunch was right. Barack would turn the tables.

Yes, Barack agreed, Wright’s statements were "controversial," and "divisive," and "racially charged," reflecting a "distorted view of America."

But we must understand the man in full and the black experience out of which the Rev. Wright came: 350 years of slavery and segregation.

Barack then listed black grievances and informed us what white America must do to close the racial divide and heal the country.

The "white community," said Barack, must start "acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination — and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past — are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds … ."

And what deeds must we perform to heal ourselves and our country?

The "white community" must invest more money in black schools and communities, enforce civil rights laws, ensure fairness in the criminal justice system and provide this generation of blacks with "ladders of opportunity" that were "unavailable" to Barack’s and the Rev. Wright’s generations.

What is wrong with Barack’s prognosis and Barack’s cure?

Only this. It is the same old con, the same old shakedown that black hustlers have been running since the Kerner Commission blamed the riots in Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit and a hundred other cities on, as Nixon put it, "everybody but the rioters themselves."

Was "white racism" really responsible for those black men looting auto dealerships and liquor stories, and burning down their own communities, as Otto Kerner said — that liberal icon until the feds put him away for bribery.

Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America.

Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to.

This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are these:

First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.

Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.

Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the ’60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.

Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks — with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas — to advance black applicants over white applicants.

Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.

We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?

Barack talks about new "ladders of opportunity" for blacks.

Let him go to Altoona and Johnstown, and ask the white kids in Catholic schools how many were visited lately by Ivy League recruiters handing out scholarships for "deserving" white kids.

Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for African-Americans are seven times those of white America? Is it really white America’s fault that illegitimacy in the African-American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent?

Is that the fault of white America or, first and foremost, a failure of the black community itself?

As for racism, its ugliest manifestation is in interracial crime, and especially interracial crimes of violence. Is Barack Obama aware that while white criminals choose black victims 3 percent of the time, black criminals choose white victims 45 percent of the time?

Is Barack aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common in the first three years of this decade as the reverse?

We have all heard ad nauseam from the Rev. Al about Tawana Brawley, the Duke rape case and Jena. And all turned out to be hoaxes. But about the epidemic of black assaults on whites that are real, we hear nothing.

Sorry, Barack, some of us have heard it all before, about 40 years and 40 trillion tax dollars ago.

40 years since the racial strife of the 1960s and not a lot appears to have changed.  Scary stuff…

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Amazing how neither John McCain, Barack Obama, nor Hillary Clinton seem to grasp the world outside of our borders and how our currency problems are a sympton of HUGE underlying problems with not only the U.S. Dollar but the U.S. economy in general.  On paper, the U.S. is bankrupt.  Such problems lead to (amongst other things) inflation across the board.

An open letter from Ron Paul:

America became the greatest, most prosperous nation in history through low taxes, constitutionally limited government, personal freedom and a belief in sound money. I decided to run for president because I am deeply concerned that the conservative movement has drifted away from these principles that we once so fiercely defended. Deficits have exploded, entitlements are out of control and our personal liberties are threatened like never before.

The current state of our economy drives home the hard truth that living beyond our means has caught up to us. Oil is over $100 a barrel, the housing market is in sharp decline and the dollar is in a free fall.

The national debt now stands in excess of $9 trillion, more than $30,000 per person. The total future debt obligations of the United States, including entitlements, are estimated at around $59 trillion, which equates to over $500,000 per household. Social Security and Medicare will likely consume the entire federal budget by 2040, threatening the average American with an impossible tax burden.

As I said this past November to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, "We’re indeed between a rock and a hard place, and we don’t talk about how we got here; we talk about how we are going to patch it up." The "solutions" proposed so far–stimulus packages, bailouts and interest rate cuts–just amount to printing more money, which will lead to greater currency devaluation, contribute to the rising costs of living, and further squeeze the middle class and our senior citizens.

This is the first time in over 100 years that monetary policy is being discussed in earnest during a presidential campaign. Money is the lifeblood of any economy, and control over a nation’s currency means control over its economic well-being. Fed bankers quite literally determine the value of our money by controlling the supply of dollars and establishing interest rates. Their actions can make you richer or poorer overnight, in terms of the value of your savings and the buying power of your paycheck. For over 30 years, I have been urging all Americans to educate themselves about monetary policy in order to better understand how a small group of unelected individuals at the Fed and the Treasury Department wield tremendous power over our lives.

In order to immediately strengthen the economy and lay the groundwork for continued prosperity, I have proposed a four-part plan that involves lower taxes, less spending, a sound monetary policy and regulatory reform.

We can take several immediate steps to reform our archaic tax system and give Americans back the fruits of their labor. I will work to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, including a repeal of the estate tax, and I will fight to end taxes on Social Security benefits and income derived from tips. I also believe that if we are to truly address the housing crisis, we will end taxes on forgiven mortgage debt, which is considered "income."

The most permanent tax reform we can undertake, though, is to end the income tax and abolish the IRS. We could remove the entire personal income tax-funded portion of the budget and the federal government would still receive roughly the same revenues that it did during the Clinton years. And we could do this without even touching Social Security and Medicare.

The key to tax reform lies in spending reform. It’s time to cut back on our trillion-dollar overseas budget and use that money to secure the programs Washington has forced so many citizens to depend on. By doing this, we can let younger generations opt out of these programs and save for their own retirements and health care needs. As president, I will also veto any unbalanced budget and demand that Congress address wasteful spending.

Lower taxes and less government spending will put more money in your pocket. A sound monetary policy will increase the value of that money and drive down the costs of living.

Immediate monetary reform can be achieved by requiring transparency at the Fed. All Federal Reserve meetings should be televised just like the proceedings of Congress, and they should once again make all information on the money supply available. I also favor legalizing competing currencies. History is replete with examples of the inevitable failure of paper money systems, from our own founding days, to inter-war Germany, to the monetary crisis of 1970s Latin America.

However, I believe that for our economy to be secure in the long term, Congress must reassert its authority and end the unconstitutional Federal Reserve.

Finally, we must be willing to undertake regulatory reform. It would serve us well to revisit the myriad federal regulations that have stymied the innovative spirit of the American people.

One of the most damaging regulations imposed on the American people is the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. A survey by Financial Executives International put the average cost of compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley at $4.4 million, while the American Economics Association estimates the Act could cost American companies as much as $35 billion. A study by the prestigious Wharton Business School found that the number of American companies delisting from public stock exchanges nearly tripled the year after Sarbanes-Oxley became law. One of the best things Congress could do for the American economy is to repeal this damaging legislation.

According to David Walker, former head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office, "We are mortgaging the future of our children and grandchildren at record rates, and that is not only an issue of fiscal irresponsibility, it’s an issue of immorality."

Unless we embrace fundamental reforms, we will be caught in a financial storm that will humble this great country as no foreign enemy ever could. However, we can find safe harbor in our ideals. Reclaiming our historic legacy of principled commitment to liberty will, once again, unleash the innovative spirit that propelled our nation to heights of prosperity never before achieved in human history.

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