The President was elected by 537 votes in the deciding state for electoral votes and stopped the manual recount that was to decide if he actually did win the election. He was appointed to office by a U.S. Supreme Court decision. He actually received 543,895 votes less than his opponent.
The President and Congress passed a bill that opened up ability for government surveillance, restricted rules on opening bank accounts or transferring money, gave the government more access to private information. (Expanded government control over civil rights.)
The United States was attacked under the watch of this President.
This President ran on a platform of limited international involvement and less bi-partisanship. The same President went to war with a foreign nation on false pretenses. Congress was actually lied to before approving the war.
This President said “Bring It On” to people who were trying to kill American soldiers.
This President that claimed to be “bi-partisan” in his campaign made statements such as “you are with us, or against us.”
Enron.
This President gave large tax breaks to the wealthy, claiming it would help invigorate the economy.
According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the real GDP grew at an average annual rate of 2.5%. (Lower than had been in the past 50 years.) The DOW Jones Industrial Average dropped from 10,587 to 7,949. “Adjusted for inflation, median household income dropped by $1,175 between 2000 and 2007, said Elizabeth Warren, professor at Harvard Law School, in written testimony before the Joint Economic Committee.“ (Resource) In the last year of his office, the U.S. entered the longest post-war recession since WWII, due to a housing market bubble, mortgage crisis, and high oil prices. (Reuters, Xinhua)
This President passed an educational bill known as the No Child Left Behind Act, which has so many criticisms, they cannot all fit in one passage, but included underfunding and increase in access for military recruitment, and most importantly, increased segregation in public schools.
Mos Def reads from Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove’s book Voices of a People’s History of the United States, November 11, 2006, at the Berkeley Community Theatre, Berkeley, California. For more information, visit: http://www.peopleshistory.us.
I was able to view Chris Matthews’ brief documentary on the “Rise of the New Right.” My immediate impression was that it was far too brief to give any detail. It was only one hour. Basically, Matthews’ discusses the rise of the Tea Party Movement.
A true, in depth view of the Rise of the New Right would have started before Reagan and discussed the theory that originated with a Pastor that “Satan wrote the Constitution” and the movements that ensued much before Reagan. The rise of thought in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (C.E.) that the United States was a nation of Provincial Divinity. (Long after the “Founding Fathers” had dispersed.) Also, and in depth documentary would have had to spend a good several hours just on Freedomworks, which I intend to discuss soon in the future.
I have already found a few critique of Matthews’ documentary that are in defense of the Tea Party. None of them really respond to the specific critiques of the Tea Party Movement, namely that there was none of this outrage (from the same people) during the President G.W. Bush Era.
Watching the Tea Party footage, I thought of several things. First, an anecdote:
I was in downtown Walnut Creek one evening, about a year ago. I had a fresh latté and it was dusk, so I decided to go for a walk. I happened to be near the park and hear a lot of commotion, so I ventured over to see what was going on. I did not know at first that it was a Tea Party Rally. I did notice the people in the park were not people that I have typically seen in this California version of Stars Hallow. There was a man in the gazebo shouting and people with mullets were cheering. There were confederate flags dispersed among the sea of Don’t Tread On Me flags, and lots of denim jackets with no sleeves. I immediately felt like Richard Pryor in Bustin’ Loose, only I had no pointy hood and robe to wear. I was in the middle of this mess. The orator was screaming how President Obama was a muslim communist bent on destroying the country and other such nonsense. The agitation and anger and lean towards violence were palpable. I was genuinely frightened. I guess I should point out that I grew up outside of Camden, New Jersey… so I don’t frighten easily.
I tell that story to demonstrate what this movement feels like to an outside observer. And I can’t help but wonder how America would feel if this was a minority. I would point out that the Black Panther Party used the Constitution and legal rights to stand up against a racist system, yet are regarded as “equals to the KKK” by much of White America. And, in reality, the BPP were a small movement compared to the also small Tea Party Movement. What if there were this many Blacks or Latinos that picked up guns and had public demonstrations about how “This government does not represent us!” or “taking the country” to a more representative government? What if Latinos that are American Citizens in Arizona felt tired of being singled out and asked for documentation and decided to carry weapons and stage militia training to fight the “tyrannical government”? Quite obviously, they would not have support of a majority of the Tea Party movement.
I mean, really, Black Americans’ ancestors constructed the White House, and most of the government buildings for the United States. They have fought and died for this country. Where is the concern for the Black community and the equal representation? What about the Chicano population? The Indigenous population? If ANYONE has a claim to a lack of representation as American Citizens, would it not be these groups? If they did mobilize and chant seditious commentary in the streets, how long would that last? In the 1950s, Black Americans chanted in the streets peacefully for equal rights and were attacked with dogs and firehoses . . .
Well, the New Right claims they are not racist. They claim their problem with President Obama is a number of things. Most of them are actually not true. They claim he is not an American citizen… but he is an American Citizen. They claim he is Muslim . . . so what? They claim he is a racist . . . really? I could go on, but these people are just raving loons and not worth the time. None of these critiques are valid. (I do find people on the far left have some VERY valid critiques of President Obama, but everyone ignores them, and I will too, as to not feed the raving loons.)
I haven’t had an entry in over a week. I wish I could say it was because everything has filled me with a sense of futility, but the reality is that I haven’t budgeted my time very well.
While on hiatus, Arizona made the news again with the mural on a school in Prescott. An article can be found on the Daily Courier, here. In a nutshell, they hired artists to paint a mural with the students of an elementary school, of the students of the elementary school. The students were of multiple ethnicities, which prompted some shouting of racial epithets by passers-by for two months. The artist contributes this hostility to City Councilman, Steve Blair. On his radio show on KYCA, he stated:
“I am not a racist individual, but I will tell you depicting a black guy in the middle of that mural, based upon who’s president of the United States today and based upon the history of this community when I grew up, we had four black families – who I have been very good friends with for years – to depict the biggest picture on that building as a black person, I would have to ask the question, ‘Why?’”
Then the school decided to “lighten the mural” or, more specifically, lighten the faces of the students. Then the school decided not to do this, because of the national outcry.
What I find is the real issue here is the attack on “pluralism” and the identification of “who is an American” with a specific image. This is really fascist. Not in an attempt to spread a slur around… it really is fascist. It is a tenant of fascism. The most notable case was the image of the “Aryan” – the blue eyed, blonde haired German that was the “only real German” according to Hitler’s Nazi Party. Just like with anything else, there are varying degrees. Would I equate this to the Nazi platform? No, not really. But is it fascism? Yes, definitely.
This has been a rising tide since the election of the first Black American President. This rallying cry of the New Right for what it means to “Be an American.” (more…)
It is quite often claimed that Black Americans or Chicano Americans are more prone to be criminals in the United States. Usually this claim is accompanied by statistics. I often wonder if people really just pick and choose statistics to support what they “want” to prove, or if they look at statistics and make a conclusion from gathering the evidence. I think we all know that the prior is much more common than the latter.
First, Let us look at the statistics.
From the US Census Bureau (2008):
The American population is 304,059,724.
257,116,111 people are not Hispanic or Latino.
199,491,458 people are White.
37,171,750 people are Black Americans/African Americans/Negro (was on the 2010 Census)
2,328,982 people are Native American
13,237,698 people are Asian
434,561 people are Hawaiian
4,451,662 people are “two or more races”
46,943,613 are Latino or Hispanic (and are broken up among various other races)
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics: “In 2008, over 7.3 million people were on probation, in jail or prison, or on parole at year-end — 3.2% of all U.S. adult residents or 1 in every 31 adults.” and “In 1997, 9% of the black population in the U.S. was under some form of correctional supervision compared to 2% of the white population and over 1% of other races. “
What does this say? Well, it does say that Black Americans are disproportionally arrested in the United States. It doesn’t quite clearly say much else. You can infer that it means that Black people are criminals. You can also infer that it means a racist society will tend to prosecute those at the receiving end of the racism.
After a few hours of combing through statistics at the Bureau of Justice Statistics, I remembered again why I hate numbers. They give me a headache. I can reprint a ton of information, but I really don’t want to. A bunch of it can be found here: http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=1743
It basically says that Whites are more often the victims of crimes, overwhelmingly. What does that say? Well, for once, it says that crimes are reported by whites much more frequently than by anyone else. Does that mean they aren’t more often the victims of crimes? Not at all. Does it mean they are? Not at all. There are a lot of things you can infer from statistics, but it doesn’t always make them legitimate until you can correlate them and provide farther evidence.
So, yeah, I got really tired of those pages and pages of charts and numbers. Then I found the National Crime Victimization Survey that was started under President Nixon. “A key finding of the survey was the realization that many crimes were not reported to the police.”
The survey also found that ‘in the period 1992-2000, significantly less than half (43%) of all criminal acts reported through victimization surveys were also reported to police.‘ Hart & Rennison (2003:3)
So, when you look at the DOJ statistics, it states that 4,176,440 Whites were the victims of crimes in 2007 and 794,220 Blacks were the victims of crimes in the same year. With a “rate per 1,000 persons age 12 and over” of 20.5 for Whites and 26.1 for Blacks.
Again, what do we conclude by this? When 43% of crimes are not even reported, does this give an accurate picture? The Uniform Crime Report has numbers very similar to the National Crime Victimization Survey, but the UCR is only reported by police.
I’m getting tired, so I’m just going to rip this line from Wikipedia, but it is a summary of the FBI Expanded Homicide Data – Crime in the United States 2008. Link here.
African Americans were arrested more than any other race for murder in 2008, making up 36% of all arrests. African Americans, constituting approximately 12% of the general population, were significantly overrepresented in the total arrests made. African Americans were also significantly overrepresented in victimization, representing 47% of all murder victims. White Americans and individuals of Other race were significantly underrepresented in cases of murder and non-negligible homicide in 2008. Murder in White American and African American populations were overwhelmingly intraracial, with 83% of all White victims and 90% of all Black victims having been murdered by individuals of the same race. The same was true, though to a lesser degree, for individuals of Other race, with 52% having been murdered by individuals also of Other race.
So, what did we learn? So far we learned that our prisons are filling up with Blacks more than Whites, that half of all crimes go unreported, and that most people are murdered by people with the same skin color as themselves.
Finally, I want to turn to a non-government source of information. If you have never heard of the Innocence Project, it is a nobleorganization that does wonderful things. Anyone who talks bad about them is an asshole. And this is why: 254 EXONERATED
Here is information from the Innocence Project:
Seventeen people had been sentenced to death before DNA proved their innocence and led to their release.
The average sentence served by DNA exonerees has been 13 years.
About 70 percent of those exonerated by DNA testing are members of minority groups.
In almost 40 percent of the cases profiled here, the actual perpetrator has been identified by DNA testing.
Exonerations have been won in 34 states and Washington, D.C.
70 PERCENT OF THOSE EXONERATED BY DNA TESTING ARE MEMBERS OF MINORITY GROUPS!
Surprise!
Anyway. This could really go on for quite a while. There are so many moderating and intervening variables that need to be examined. Even IF there was concrete evidence that Black Americans were 90 times more likely to commit a violent crime, you need to isolate that to provide proof that it is due to them being Black Americans and not the social environment, class situation, environment, nutrition, prenatal care, neonatal care, et cetera. (There is a lot of evidence that people from low-income communities were more prone to violence in the past due to children ingesting large amounts of lead paint. We DO know that lead causes violent behavior.) I still see no evidence at all that links skin color to violence or criminal behavior. These tendencies have not been proven to be clustered, or linked, to skin color in any way.
Oh, nevermind. There are several books written about it. Like America behind bars: trends in imprisonment, 1950 to 2000 by Rick Ruddell. (You can look it up on Google Books for free, or you can come back when I update this page and click on the link to buy it from Amazon and give me a percentage of the sale.)
I really don’t like maths.
And I really get tired of using statistics to prove a point in such detail.
I guess we could all just go to Lawrence Auster’s website and read the selected incidents and news articles that he has cherry picked to prove his point and avoid doing ANY actual research. Hell, if Sarah Palin’s research involves having someone else write her biography and give a speech about the notes on her hand, and make $12 million a year, who needs to actually look up statistical data and analyze studies? Compiling data? Isn’t that for the Elite? “We don’t need no book learnin’ and ‘rithmatic!”
Especially when 99% of all statistics are wrong.
“Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything. 14% of people know that.” – Homer Simpson
