Selective perception and immigration reform

Many believe our borders are under siege everyday by millions of illegals, and that the Obama Administration is doing absolutely nothing about it.  An almost equal number think Obama is more compassionate to illegals – and Hispanics by default – because he avidly supports a “path to citizenship” for the 11-12 million already here.  Plus, he’s initiated some Executive Orders that are also helpful to children whose parents came here illegally. 

Okay, so here’s the reality.  Under Obama illegal crossings are down and the rate of forced deportations is up.  Now some say the bad U.S. economy is the real reason crossings are down, which is probably true.  But Obama’s no slacker when it comes to deportations, especially for those who commit criminal acts.  He’s also pumped up security on the southern border.  Under Obama there also have probably been more ICE raids on those who employ illegals, resulting in even more deportations.  

Yet because almost none of this gets much coverage, the far right thinks he’s soft on illegal immigration while Hispanics think he’s their guy.   The truth is, he’s neither.   He’s pretty much like his predecessor; if anything, he might be a little tougher on people trying to cross our borders illegally now.    

Sorry, but it’s true.  You even have to give the devil his due when it’s earned. 

So let’s talk immigration reform, almost a perfect storm of selective perception where everybody hears what they want to hear and politicians and the media withhold or bury the real facts.   

It’s all about promoting everyone’s respective narratives. 

The media works hard to make the public believe that millions of illegal immigrants are waiting breathlessly for a path to citizenship.  With isolated sob stories they paint a picture of families torn apart when one parent is deported.  Of the fear immigrants have of being caught and sent back.  Of the dangers immigrants face trying to get into this country. 

The implication through these carefully selected snippets is that, despite being a nation of immigrants ourselves, we are now a mean, cruel and heartless country toward people simply coming here for a better life, much as our forebears did.    

The prevailing storyline is that the Senate’s just passed immigration bill is a major advance in comprehensive immigration reform.  Not only will it save our souls and restore our heritage, but it will bring hope and dignity to these “undocumented” workers.  They’ll be able to emerge from the shadows and share in the American dream at last.    

The media has positively gushed about the “heroic” efforts of the bipartisan group of Senators to create a “path to citizenship” and that – finally – many Republican Senators have joined their more enlightened Democrat colleagues and voted for the Senate bill.  

Details about the bill are noticeably absent in most reports.  On purpose, I believe.  Instead, the summaries make it seem like we’ll be strengthening our borders while law-abiding illegal immigrants already here will see the prospect of legal citizenship within their reach. 

Well there are a few things left out of that.  First, “law-abiding illegal” is an oxymoron.      

That aside, if you drilled down on the Senate’s bill, you’d realize that no current illegal immigrant who has successfully escaped deportation so far is ever, ever, going to go through all the bill’s hurdles to become a citizen.  Not voluntarily. 

And despite what critics claim, and some Hispanics apparently believe, there’s no “amnesty” for those here illegally.  Far from it. 

There are penalties, fines, back taxes, background checks, a requirement that they learn English, and about 13 years between application and getting their citizenship papers.  Plus, they are excluded from some Federal benefits during that time; some of which they’re getting now, and many won’t get healthcare coverage under ObamaCare.    

Why would they go through all that?  For what?  So they can vote?  Not being a citizen isn’t getting in the way of that now.  So what do they really gain that they don’t have now?  The only thing I can think of is the right to be called for jury duty.   Oh boy.

This is really much ado about nothing.  Except perception.  

Republicans didn’t get a lot of Hispanic votes the last election.  They think it’s because of their intransigent positions on immigration.  That hurt them but wasn’t the sole reason.  There were lots of other reasons for Hispanics as well as non-Hispanics to prefer Obama over Romney the last time around.  To Hispanics, Romney came across as a rich white guy whose only experience with them was as gardeners or maids.  

Then extreme right-wing Republicans across the country also said a lot of dumb things that were given inordinate attention by the media. 

Most of all, however, Romney lost because a large number of white traditionally Republican voters just sat out the last election, for one reason or another.  For many of them, Romney probably didn’t have enough pizazz to lead them out of a burning building. They didn’t vote at all. 

That’s something Republican leaders don’t seem to grasp.  Or prefer not to deal with.  Instead, Republicans leaders are now obsessed with the Hispanic vote – even though Hispanics make up only about 10% of voters.  Talk about misinterpreting small bits of data. 

So Republicans who supported the immigration reform bill in the Senate and those planning to support the bill in the House are playing defense.  They hope Hispanic voters might remember them as friends – or at least not as enemies – when election time rolls around.  They hope to make inroads into the Hispanic vote simply by supporting this bill. 

That’s not going to happen. 

You see, for every Marco Rubio in the Republican Party, there’s a Ted Cruz fire-breathing about the perils of “amnesty” and turning off even more Hispanics as well as non-Hispanic moderate voters. 

Also, even if every Republican stood up in support of this bill – and I’m not saying they should – they still wouldn’t get any credit for it.  The media has already decided that; they would paint the Republicans as only doing this for shamelessly political reasons – to try to mend fences with Hispanic voters.

Which, quite frankly, is why they would be supporting such a garbage bill.    

However, speaking of shamelessly political reasons, that’s why Democrats are pushing this bill so hard.  They know it will likely fail in the Republican House or at least stir up a firestorm there.  Then they can use it in the upcoming mid-term elections to bash Republicans.  Like moths to a flame, a lot of Republicans won’t be able to resist the bait and the media will be there to turn whatever they say into immigrant-bashing sound bites.

So even if does by some miracle or chicanery pass in the House, it’s a lose/lose scenario for the Republicans. There’s no political upside for them. 

And no one – I repeat no one – in the media, except perhaps the Wall Street Journal, is going to detail how meaningless this bill is in reality.  Plus, how much pure crapola has been packed into it.  It’s about as porky and special-interest-laden as anyone can imagine. 

The real winners in this bill?  Not illegal immigrants, although they are the poster children. 

Rich foreigners who promise to start businesses here will essentially be able to buy American citizenship.  Companies who now employ illegals to boost profits can now lock in those low-wage workers by pushing them into the reform provisions.  Companies that use the H1B immigration provisions to recruit lower-cost foreign professionals will be able to expand the numbers they bring in, putting more pressure on the wages paid to U.S. citizens. 

And there’s much, much more. 

Haven’t read much about those things, have you?  Surprised?  You shouldn’t be.  It’s like ObamaCare all over again.  The back-room deals, the carve outs, the special-interest giveaways – they’re all present in the Senate’s immigration reform bill.  But because they don’t fit the narrative the media and Democrats are presenting – or the manufactured outrage the extreme right is fomenting – you won’t see much about them.   You’ll have to search pretty hard.     

You should try to read the bill for yourself.  If you can find it.  I’ve tried and can’t find a durable link to it to pass on to you anywhere.   The closest I can get is here:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c113:S.744:

If you succeed in your quest you’ll find it’s only about 1200 pages long.  Have fun.  Realize that while you’re not willing to read all 1200 pages and thread through all the arcane cross references to other legislation and regulations, neither are your Senators or Representatives.  The people pushing this bill  are counting on that. 

I guess Congress will just have to pass it to see what’s in it.  Where have we heard that before? 

Is it real immigration reform?  Kind of.  Is it worthy of all the hyperbolic rhetoric?  Not really.  

I suppose it's all in the eye of the beholder.  That's what selective perception is all about. 

For me, it's just politics as usual.   

The blind men and the elephant

This has always been one of my favorite allegories because it explains so much.

If you’ve forgotten, a group of blind men encounter an elephant and make conclusions based on very narrow observations.  One holds its tail and says that an elephant must be like a rope.  Another holds a leg and decides an elephant must be like a pillar.  And so on. 

There are Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi and other variations of the story. 

Or you can look at it from the elephant’s perspective. 

A bunch of blind elephants decide to determine what a man is by direct experience.  So they find a man and the first blind elephant tests the man with his foot and decides that men are flat.  After the other blind elephants repeat the test they agree. 

The point of all these stories is that you shouldn’t make broad assumptions based on extremely limited and possibly misleading scraps of data.   

Yet our government and media present snippets of data to mold us to their views all the time.  Most often they do it to make a case for something that’s probably not supported by a broader base of data, or to hide potentially damaging elements.  In short, they use emotion and the public’s ignorance of the actual facts to push public opinion where they want.

Does that mean the public is ignorant and stupid? Not necessarily. The public may only see what politicians and the media want them to see. 

Listen, if your entire information pipeline was the Philly local evening news broadcast, like Channel 6 Action News, you’d think the following:

·         Factories and warehouses are especially flammable  in Kensington …

·         The homes of black families are also especially flammable …

·         If you go to West Philly or Camden at night you’re likely to get shot …

·         There's a dress code for security videos:  perps must wear hoodies and dark pants …

·         Apparently 90% of this region is black; most of the rest don’t speak English …

·         The few prominent whites here are news anchors, old rich people, some cops, and union leaders …

·         Most of the other white males here are low-lifes who wear wife-beaters year-round …

·         Most white females here are obese single parents of mixed-race children …  

Have I got that pretty much dead to rights?  If all you know is from Action News, that’s your world.  You don’t really want to “get closer to your world, my friend” if it’s true. 

Now of course that’s not a true representation of the demographics of the Philly area, but who would know that unless they had access to – and the desire to find – the true story?

If you stayed tuned for the ABC national news, on a typical night you’d additionally infer the following from the new segments:

·         Economic recovery is well underway, except for some group/region/city/industry …

·         Budget cuts are really hurting families that depend on government benefits …

·         Aging baby boomers are selfish pigs bleeding the government dry …

·         Democrats are trying to help women, working families, the poor and minorities  …

·         A lot of Republicans are misogynist, xenophobic religious nutjobs and hypocrites …

·         The only reason things aren’t getting better faster is because Congress is being held hostage by right-wing zealots who hate Obama, poor people, women, minorities and immigrants …

That’s about as deep as it goes.  Throw in some celebrity criminal case with attractive people – like Jody Arias – and a splashy travelogue of Obama and/or his family somewhere and it’s a wrap. 

If you don’t fast forward through the commercials, you’ll also learn:

·         Unbeknownst to you until now, you have a serious health problem …

·         There’s a drug to help fix whatever that is …

·         The side effects of that drug may be far worse than the problem …

No wonder most people are ill informed about what’s happening in their own country. And positively clueless about what’s going on anywhere else in the world, for that matter. 

Not to mention perpetually running to their doctors for prescription drugs to treat maladies they never knew they had.   Or for new pharmacological answers to issues traditionally – and usually successfully – treated by diet and exercise programs.   But that’s a topic for another time. 

In terms of what’s really happening here and abroad, there are readily available newspapers with more details, but hardly anybody reads those anymore.  And of course there’s the Internet, but most people only look for news online that confirms whatever they already believe. 

The real, detailed and verifiable information is always available to anyone who cares to dig for it.  It’s just that the way it’s packaged and manipulated for mass consumption by politicians and the media, what gets delivered is consciously designed to leave the audience with a certain impression.   

Stuff gets left out because it doesn’t fit the narrative being promoted.       

If many in the media are in cahoots with politicians – as they appear to be now – to advance an agenda, you can’t blame the public for not knowing what they’ve never seen or heard. 

When you combine sins of commission and sins of omission, it’s tough to know what’s missing.  Or even what the whole story might be.  Add to that intentionally misleading “issue” ads and it’s no wonder the public is confused and why so many hold beliefs that have no basis in reality at all.   

What's really interesting is that both Republicans and Democrats accuse each other of catering to “low-information” voters.  Which is more than just a little funny.  Like the pot calling the kettle black.  

The truth is, both parties currently depend on low-information voters.  If the voting public really understood the full picture – about the economy, immigration, security, government spending and other hot button issues – I believe neither party could survive. 

Of course, that’s presuming the voting public actually cares enough to learn the facts so they can make better, more informed decisions about the direction the country should take. 

And based on recent events, that’s a Hell of a presumption to make.  

The problem with progressives …

I always feel people who call themselves “progressives” think they are somehow smarter, more enlightened, and more qualified to guide the rest of us toward the “right” thing. 

They leave me with the impression that if we simply let the most intelligent (them, of course) among us take the reins they would relieve us of the burden of trying to understand the bigger picture – which they can clearly see, and we obviously can’t.  In return, they would create a new and better society based on what’s truly the best for us; something the masses are intellectually and culturally unable to do. 

Now I’ll be honest:  that condescending crap really pisses me off.  Progressives are not really interested in helping the general population – they want to play God.  And they want that power. 

So most progressives are wannabe totalitarians – they have more in common with Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin and other ruthless dictators than they imagine.  They think they can design a better world by making the necessary hard decisions their inferiors don’t have the will to undertake, hampered as we mere mortals are by such silly and old fashioned concepts as ethics and morality.

It’s all about “the greater good” as progressives see it.  The same rationale used by dictators.   

Like us, progressives probably had to read Orwell’s Animal Farm in school.  However, they had a different take.  Most of us saw the hypocrisy of “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”  They probably nodded their heads in agreement, because in theory all people may be equal but some – like them – really are better and more gifted than others. 

And the better and more gifted should always be in charge.  Like Napoleon the pig. 

We – the general population – just aren’t as smart as they are.  Not to worry – they will act in our best interests for us.  They will decide what we can eat or drink and how much.  They will decide where we should live.  They will decide what kind of cars we should drive, and how we should protect ourselves and our children in those cars.  They will decide who we should hire and how much to pay them.  They will decide how much we have and how much we have to share.  They will decide who is worth additional medical treatment and who should be left to die. 

Decisions, decisions, decisions.   Thank God they’ll make them all for us. 

Or maybe we should just thank them – wouldn’t it be the same thing? 

What really bothers progressives is the annoying tendency of the unenlightened to resist what progressives have deemed best for them. 

America should have elected Al Gore.  Failing that, it should have elected John Kerry.  We should have a cap-and-trade program in place by now.  We shouldn’t be allowed to challenge climate change theories.  We should all be driving hybrid cars and living in houses powered by solar energy.  We should have stopped all domestic drilling to push fossil fuel prices higher and make alternative energy viable.   Hell, gasoline should be $5 or $6 a gallon at the pump by now.   

We should be like Europe. 

That would be progress.  But no.  None of that’s happened.   

And the fault for that is … stupid, stupid public. 

What’s a progressive to do when the hoi polloi can’t be trusted to go with the program?  What can you do when the masses persuade politicians to vote against the right path to social and cultural utopia?

Easy.  Change the rules so you can bypass the uninformed and misguided. 

I mean, the public’s not that bright, right?  They won’t notice, especially if your equally enlightened progressive friends in the media do their part. 

Now you still have to go through the motions of conducting elections.  That’s troublesome, but not so much if you play your politics right and if you have the media in your pocket. 

Progressives have no issue with ignoring laws and rules.  So register everyone and everything – citizen or not, human or pets, dead or alive, whatever – and encourage them to vote early and vote often.  (The inner-city dead are traditionally a very reliable progressive voting bloc – something to consider. Also, you’ll find most pets registered to vote tend to be liberal Democrats.) 

With the dead and pet vote in your pocket, you can turn your attention to living humans.   

Get students away at college and people with multiple homes in different states to register at home and away.  That way they can vote multiple times – with an absentee ballot in every state they have a permanent or temporary residence and also in person. 

While you’re at it, don’t forget prisoners, the illiterate, the mentally diminished, and “undocumented” immigrants, too.  Volunteers can “help” them fill in their ballots the right way, with or without them present.  Progressives know how they would vote anyway.  They are omniscient. 

Or you can simply stuff the ballot boxes the old-fashioned way.  That’s big city voting. Just get a lot of people to fill out and submit a bunch of bogus registrations, use these to get absentee ballots, and then also vote in person under assumed names at a variety of polling places.

If anyone challenges you in the process, like when you tool up in a van full of drunk homeless people complaining about all the polling places they’ve been that day, don’t worry.  If someone thinks it’s unusual for so many people named Mickey Mouse, M. Mouse, Mike Mouse and other derivatives to be voting at the same time, registered at the same apartment or vacant lot, so what. 

It’s all for the greater good. 

Progressives have fought to make it illegal in a lot of places to ask for ID much less a photo ID to vote, so it’s still open season.  People can vote as many times as they wish, under as many identities they feel comfortable with.   No one will bat an eye. 

The media will see nothing amiss.  Even when more people vote in a district than are registered there.  Or when several precincts in Philly report tallies of 100% for one candidate, and 0% for his opponent, which means that out of all the votes cast there, not one person voted in error – a first, ever.    

Nothing to see here, right?   

As to bypassing legislators and the courts, it’s increasingly easy to use Executive Orders and reams of arcane agency regulations to accomplish whatever means you desire.  The media will back you up.  If anyone pushes back, ignore them; if that doesn’t work, attack them yourself or through “useful idiots,” to use a term Lenin would understand. 

The ends justify the means, after all, and it’s the “big picture” that ultimately matters. 

The whole idea of checks and balances and limits to authority under the Constitution is so – well, passé to a progressive.  The founders who wrote that couldn’t possibly have envisioned the world we live in now and what an obstacle to “progress” the Constitution would become.     

That’s why we need progressives.  They aren’t hindered by ethics, morality and the rule of law.  Certainly not by the Constitution, and especially not by the pesky Bill of Rights.  

They want to do what’s right for all of us.  Even if we’re not smart enough to realize it. 

Progressives truly believe they should be in charge of everything.  To get there, there’s not much they won’t do.  Ignore laws and rules.  Ignore the Constitution, and especially the Bill of Rights.  Diminish individual rights and liberties.  Promote the breakdown of traditional values, and make the state the sole arbiter of right and wrong.  Use the power of government to suppress dissent.

Whoa.  That sounds like a police state. 

That’s where progressives want to take us. 

Just remember ... they want what's best for us.  Whether we want it or not.  

Descendants of slaves

That’s a new category I saw online the other day, in the context of the affirmative-action case now before the SCOTUS and a new poll showing public support for affirmative action at a new low. 

You can read about the poll here:

http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/11/18885926-nbc-newswsj-poll-affirmative-action-support-at-historic-low?lite

In the same article, Kevin Brown, a law professor at Indiana University, claimed that we shouldn’t consider the ascendency of Barack Obama (President), Colin Powell (retired 4-star general and former Secretary of State) and Eric Holder (Attorney General) as indicative of progress for black Americans. 

He pointed out that these people were “Kenyan, Caribbean, Caribbean” respectively and not “descendants of slaves.”  

Okay.  I guess there’s a new litmus test for who is really black in America.  Or at least, who still needs special consideration in all things because of something that ended almost 150 years ago. 

I’ll admit, I was not aware of this distinction.  Probably, because like many in my generation, I really don’t give that much thought to race or ethnicity on a daily basis.  I took Dr. King’s message to heart at a very early age and naively – it seems – thought most of the rest of us did as well. 

Silly me. 

It’s not that I don’t recognize that there are people in the population who look different from me.  I’m not blind after all.  I can see that some people are various shades of black or brown, some have varying degrees of Asian features, some are various shades of white, and some are a mix of some or all of the above.  Unless I talk to them and they have an accent of sorts, or they make a point of telling me, I can’t really tell where they are from.

I certainly can’t tell if they are descendants of slaves or not.  But then again, I’ve never thought to make that distinction.  Apparently now I have to.  

So it makes a difference now where someone who is one of those shades of black or brown is from originally, and whether they can trace their lineage back to being descended from slaves brought to America from Africa at some point. 

That seems to be somewhat of a fine point to me.  As important as that must be to some people, I’m not sure how that’s going to come up in a casual conversation. 

I can’t remember any Irish or English descendants of indentured servants – of which there were many in Colonial America – making this type of distinction for their current social standing. 

I’ve always tended to measure people I meet for the first time on their manners, their skills, their intelligence, how articulate and thoughtful they are, and their sense of humor or lack thereof.  Not necessarily in that order.  But I can tell you that race or ethnicity is not one of the criteria. 

Much less if one or more of their forebears were slaves from Africa brought to America. 

I guess the point this professor was trying to make with his “descendants of slaves” carve out was that we should ignore all the positive signs of progress that blacks in America have made – in government, business and industry – and focus instead on those who haven’t done as well. 

Forget the silver lining; focus on the cloud. 

In short, he’s using an old academic trick of skewing the sample – changing the parameters of measurement at the same time – to get the results he wants instead of dealing with the reality he doesn’t want to acknowledge.  It’s intellectual fraud. 

Blacks, African-Americans, or whatever the proper name du jour is, have made enormous progress in America over the past 150 years.  And spectacular progress since the 1960s.  Only an idiot or huckster would ignore the progress that’s been made.     

Much of that resulted from the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which outlawed most major forms of discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion and gender.  It ended racial segregation of public schools, workplaces and public accommodations, as well as unequal application of voter registration requirements. 

For you political history buffs, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was championed by Republicans and opposed by Southern Democrats like the late Robert Byrd – a former KKK member who filibustered against its passage for 14 hours.  Hubert Humphrey, the Democrat liberal lion from Minnesota, also wrote two amendments to the bill to outlaw school busing to achieve desegregation. 

Just a side note to consider. 

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 which followed outlawed states from setting any "voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure ... to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color."  It also created something called “covered jurisdictions” primarily in the South to place a special burden on states and counties with histories of suppressing or restricting voter registrations and voting by minorities in general through literacy tests, poll taxes and the like.  To make changes in practically anything related to registration or voting, these covered jurisdictions had to get Federal approval first. 

Flash forward to today – almost 50 years later.  Those “covered jurisdictions” still exist and the rules governing them still apply to most.  If one of them wants to move a polling place, or change a ballot, or redistrict, they have to get “pre-clearance” from the DOJ or a three-judge panel of the Federal District Court in DC – for every instance. 

So if they want to change the color or paper used for a ballot, or move a polling place two doors down, for example, they probably have to get prior approval.  And every time they need to get approval for something – no matter how minor – they are subjected again to scrutiny by a politicized DOJ which can use it as leverage to get another bite at the apple. 

The net/net of all this is that these areas are still being punished for infractions that may have happened decades ago and haven’t happened since.  They are presumed to be up to something, automatically. 

Because nobody wants to have on their record that they voted against the Act – which would open them to charges of being a racist – Congress has renewed the Act four times, and George W. Bush signed a 25-year extension of the Act in 2006.  

One of the cases before the SCOTUS this session – Shelby County v. Holder – has to do with the need to maintain the pre-clearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, especially since many of the covered jurisdictions now have better voting records for minorities than other states and counties who aren’t under the same rules. 

Of course, this is bringing out the old guard of the civil rights movement who see an opportunity to bring up racism – real or imagined – again.  Keeping their political base as perpetual victims in need of special consideration at all times is the source of their power.  If their constituents are no longer the abject victims they claim them to be, they no longer have power to demand concessions by making the rest of us feel guilty about their plight.  If the real reasons a minority group is still poor and at the bottom rung of the economic ladder are proven to have nothing to do with institutional discrimination, then what?  

It’s a scary proposition for them.  It’s like waving the bloody shirt and then learning it’s not blood after all but ketchup.   

So the Shelby case, coupled with the affirmative action case – Fisher v. University of Texas – has their heads spinning.  In Fisher, the Court will decide if a public university violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment by considering race in its admissions process.

Consequently, you’ll be seeing a lot of stuff in the media about how far minorities haven’t progressed in this country.  How discrimination by race is still rampant.  How voter suppression by requiring voter IDs is targeted at blacks and Hispanics.  How America remains a hotbed of angry whites, just waiting, as Joe Biden said, for Republicans “to put y’all back in chains.” 

You and I may realize that’s just complete and utter bullshit.  But the media and some minorities eat it up.  It’s easier and more comforting to believe that there’s some big conspiracy holding you back than take a hard look at what you may or may not have done to yourself.     

Look, a significant majority of white voters helped elect a true African-American (Kenyan father) to the highest office in the land.  Twice. 

It’s hard to maintain that widespread racial discrimination by whites still exists when that happens.   Or that remedies from the 1960s that put special burdens on selected states and counties to insure that minority voters aren’t disenfranchised need to be kept in force – especially when minorities in those same “special” areas voted in historically high numbers in the last two elections.    

When Obama was elected, I said that this is both the dream and nightmare of many civil rights leaders in the black community. 

Dr. King would be proud that so many Americans of all colors and backgrounds came together to elect a black President apparently on his merits, not his skin color.  His dream come true. 

Conversely, the Al Sharptons and Jesse Jacksons of the world – who have made playing the race card their only raison d'être – lost an important plank of their platform.

How could they keep a straight face while telling America it was fundamentally racist when it freely elected an African-American to the White House, not once but twice?  And did that with a majority of white voters in both cases? 

Well now we know the plan going forward for race-baiters and advocates of race-based entitlements and privileges.  Those who consider themselves black and have succeeded – like Colin Powell, Eric Holder, and yes, Barack Obama – don’t count.  They aren’t descendants of slaves.

Others who have risen to high positions in government – like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, as well as Deval Patrick in Massachusetts, Douglas Wilder in Virginia and numerous other elected officials in the North and the South – don’t count either.  They’ll dismiss Thomas and Rice as tokens.  I don’t know how they’ll dismiss the others. 

Maybe they’ll decide those people aren’t really black, or black enough.  Maybe they’ll come up with a new category based on how dark-skinned someone is.  Or something else. 

Folks, only racists see everything though the lens of race.  They think race is a primary determinant of a person’s ability, aptitude, and potential outcome.  No other criteria matters.

I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions. 

The black helicopter crowd

There’s a big dust-up right now about the government’s increasing efforts to track the habits and practices of seemingly ordinary Americans.   It’s monitoring our phone calls to determine who we’re calling, when and from where.  It’s checking our e-mails and online activities.  It’s even data mining our credit-card transactions and credit reports, among other things. 

All in the name of national security. 

This is upsetting a great number of people.  They think it’s unprecedented.  Some think the fabled black helicopters are coming right behind this.  

Me, not so much.

I’m more offended that the government is squandering so much money and other resources to duplicate what already exists, while ignoring the obvious. 

Those of us in the business know that marketers already have most of this data on ordinary citizens.  So why waste taxpayer money on costly, built-from-scratch Big Brother programs when you could buy the same data a lot cheaper on the open market? 

Sure, market data can’t tell you that so-and-so is planting a bomb at the corner of 12^th and Market this coming Thursday in the name of some obscure cause, but it can certainly narrow down the field of potential terrorists dramatically. 

Perhaps to a more manageable number than – say – 340 million people? 

I’m guessing here, but if the Feds ruled out everybody who couldn’t possibly fit a terrorist profile – like 80-year-old grandmothers who belong to the DAR and subscribe to Cat Fancy magazine, and 50-year-old men who buy suits at Brooks Brothers with their American Express Gold Card – they could get that number down big time. 

Okay, I’m being somewhat – and only somewhat – facetious, but there’s a better answer. 

There’s no need to get up in the business of every American – almost all of us are not potential terrorists, and everyone knows this.  The Feds simply need to focus on the much, much smaller number of more likely candidates.

They need to toss political correctness aside and be upfront on who is more likely to be or become a terrorist.  First cut should include people who come from places that grow terrorists.  Non-citizens like students who overstay their visas should be under a magnifying glass.  Folks who send and receive money orders to and from terrorist hotbeds deserve more scrutiny as well.   

Oh, and we might want to listen to advice from foreign intelligence services as well.  Duh. 

This would cut the potential terrorist pool down to size.  Yes, there would be cries of outrage from Muslims now in this country but originally from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Somalia, Chechnya, Iraq, Iran, Syria and other regions where Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and radical Islamists hold sway.  Muslims from those places trying to visit America or enroll with student visas would be equally offended. 

We’ll be accused of racial profiling.  Which would be true.      

So we should say yes, that’s precisely what we’re doing.  No apologies. 

Maybe if terrorists thought we were profiling effectively they’d back off a bit.  Getting caught at customs or while trying to board a flight doesn’t have the martyr prestige of a suicide bombing.  It’s about as dramatic as getting caught with a 4 oz. shampoo in your carry-on bag.  It’s not making the evening news. 

Look, we all know the underwear bomber, 911 perpetrators and Boston Marathon bombers were not Sephardic Jews.  They weren’t Pentecostal Swedes.  They weren’t Irish Catholics.  They weren’t German Protestants, nor were they Hindus, Buddhists or Mormons.     

They all did have something in common, however.  They were all radicalized Muslims.  And they all came from, or trained in, one of the areas I mentioned earlier for extra scrutiny. 

That’s not to say all Muslims in America and abroad want to kill us.  Yet the propensity to be or become a terrorist is significantly higher among certain Muslims from certain areas.  We all need to recognize the obvious and stop pretending all Muslims everywhere mean us no harm.   

A bunch of them want to see America destroyed.  They want to see our ally and proxy in the Middle East – Israel – destroyed.  They hate us, our culture, our freedoms, and our tolerance, and think we are weak and vulnerable because we turn a blind eye toward them in the name of political correctness. 

In fact, they think we’re stupid.  Candidly, the way we go about trying to find them is stupid. 

We’d rather look at everybody in this country, compile unfathomable quantities of data, and spend billions in the name of national security rather than concentrating on the most obvious suspects.

Just a suggestion to the Feds, mind you.  A teensy more targeting efficiency on the front end could save a lot of time and money.

That’s if all this snooping and spying on our citizens is really about national security and preventing terrorist attacks, and not, as the black-helicopter crowd believes, a massive government plot to gather data on every American for some nefarious purpose.

And what purpose would that be?  Granted, it’s unnerving to think that the government is watching your every move, but so is viewing curtains on Target’s site and then suddenly seeing pop-up ads for Target’s curtains on other sites you visit.  That’s not a coincidence; that’s near instantaneous use of your viewing data by Target to follow you wherever you surf.    

The credit card companies you deal with have been doing intense data mining on all their customers’ transactions for years.  Didn’t you ever wonder how their fraud-protection programs work?  They know the types of things you routinely buy with their card and where already; when something out of the ordinary pops up, an algorithm is triggered resulting in a phone call to you.   

As far as searching your e-mails and what you post online, do you think this isn’t happening already by Google, Facebook, and other social media sites?  Your life online is no secret to them or to big online retailers like Amazon, Staples, Best Buy or Walmart.   Verizon, Comcast and other ISPs have records of all the sites you visit, what you download and view, and how often.  If you have cable at home, they also know what you’re watching.

So in terms of protecting your privacy, that ship has sailed.  Your life is pretty much an open book to marketers. 

That’s because marketers are smart and know how to gather and use data with a clear purpose in mind.  They profile all the time with nary a thought to political correctness.  They use all your data to more efficiently predict your behavior and preferences.  They’ve got teams of brilliant people creating programs designed to do that better and better all the time.    

Our government is not nearly as smart.  To be kind, our government is not a repository of the best and the brightest minds our country has to offer.   That’s not because it doesn’t pay well, but because the best and brightest prefer not to work with dunderheads, political hacks, and insular bureaucrats more focused on kissing ass to retain their positions than doing a good job.

Our government doesn’t function very efficiently either – the proverbial left hand usually has no clue what the right hand is doing.  All the alphabet agencies tasked with homeland security, law enforcement, counter terrorism and intelligence might as well be feudal fiefdoms widely separated by culture and language. 

Do you really think our government is competent and coordinated enough to make some practical use of all the data we presume they are gathering?

Personally, I don’t think so. 

After all, it took the Feds 16 years to find Whitey Bulger.  You remember Whitey, the Boston mob guy.  He was finally found, living in Santa Monica, California with his long-time girlfriend, after being on the FBI’s America’s Most Wanted list for all those years.  That’s right, 16 years. 

It wasn’t the crack investigative efforts of the FBI or another government agency that finally caught Whitey, but some neighbors who recognized Whitey and his girlfriend’s pictures.     

That’s how this stuff usually happens.  We get lucky.  Somebody somewhere sees something that seems fishy and reports it.  The trouble is, our government’s usually not smart enough to know what to do with the information.

Like when a bunch of Arabic males sign up for flight lessons and want to practice with a commercial jet simulator.  Nothing suspicious there, right?  Or when a foreign country warns us about a specific individual they suspect of having ties to terrorists.  Obviously, just their opinion.    

So what exactly are the Feds looking for among all our data?  E-mails with “Death to America!” in them?  Jihadist affinity groups on Facebook?  Online purchases of suicide vests?   

Seriously, if the Feds believe terrorists are that stupid, then just use the free Google Street View; the terrorists may have a sign out front advertising their next attack.  

Do I think what the government is doing is invasive and uncalled for?  Why yes I do.  The thought of some dimwit government hack going through your virtual sock and underwear drawer is creepy. 

Do I lose sleep at night wondering what they’re really up to? 

No I don’t.  Because I don’t think they actually know what to do with all that data, much less have a purpose beyond appearing to “be doing something” about national security.

And if they’re doing this to spot terrorists and foil plots against us, as they claim, they’re wasting their time and looking in all the wrong places. 

The overwhelming majority of Americans – I’d hazard to say at least 99.99% of all American citizens– are not the enemy.  The Feds would do better to focus on other more likely prospects.

We know who they are.  So do the Feds. 

Stop annoying us.  

.  

A nation of addicts, by design

There’s a pervasive “bail-out” mentality that no matter how much trouble you get yourself into, it’s never your fault and Uncle Sam will eventually help you out. 

So don’t worry about running up your debts, investing badly, buying a house you can’t afford, dropping out of school, having 5 kids by the time you’re 20, feeding those kids, or borrowing a hundred grand to get a degree in French philosophers of the Middle Ages – no harm no foul. 

Uncle Sam will make it all right.  Someone else will always pick up the tab for your gross irresponsibility. 

This same generosity and absolution of irresponsibility is also applied to favored businesses.  So even if you’re a nit-wit CEO who has flagrantly mismanaged your company and lied to your investors – but you are in a green-energy business, employ a lot of people, or are a big deal on Wall Street – there’s hope for you, too.  Uncle Sam will do practically anything to keep you afloat. 

Yes, it’s a Faustian bargain at times – you’ll have to do whatever the government demands in return, like produce self-immolating cars nobody wants, for example – but the money and support will be there to keep you floundering along. 

This holds true for elected officials and bureaucrats in the public sector as well.  Maybe you let pay, perks and benefits for public employees skyrocket.  Maybe you agreed to ridiculous union contracts you can’t afford.  Maybe you issued now-worthless bonds.  Maybe you even robbed your pension funds and then projected fanciful rates of return to paper things over.  So what?  You just have to trot out the usual hostages – firefighters, police, and teachers – and wait for help to come. 

Past experience shows it will. 

When the rest of the economy was on the skids and private sector workers were being pink-slipped by the millions, did the public sector suffer?  Nope.  In fact, it added jobs. Was this because there was a desperate need for more public sector workers?  Nope.  Cities and states got Federal “stimulus” money – you remember, for “shovel-ready” jobs to build infrastructure – which they promptly used to postpone layoffs and even give raises in some cases.  State and local governments got to keep the good times rolling, while politicians took credit for “creating or saving jobs.”  

Now, of course, after squandering those temporary boosts in funding – eating the proverbial seed corn, as it were – and the sequester on future, not current, spending, everyone in the public sector and anyone dependent on government spending is freaking out. 

It’s not like nobody knew this would happen.  They just expected to dodge reality again, either by more rounds of “stimulus” money or higher taxes, neither of which appear to be forthcoming.     

Now they have to suffer withdrawal.   

The problem is that the Federal government increasingly is stepping in to take the pain – and any useful learning lesson – out of the consequences of stupidity and irresponsible behavior, whether that’s personal, institutional, big business, or governmental.  Then the media make it seem like these government actions are acts of compassion to be praised. 

The reality is these bail outs and handouts are more akin to giving an addict another hit off the crack pipe to keep them coming back.  These are only happening out the self-interest of politicians; there’s rarely any higher altruistic purpose at play here.   

It’s obvious that a lot of politicians want the public, businesses, and institutions wholly addicted.  They know that if the dependency on government programs is strong enough, they’ll stay in power until they die.  They know that people won’t vote against their own self-interest, and all politicians need to do is make certain a majority of voters are dependent on handouts.  They also know that business executives and unions contribute to the campaigns of politicians who protect them from real market forces, foreign and domestic competitors, and having to pay their fair share of taxes. 

So don’t buy into the bullshit that all these assistance programs, entitlements, tax credits and subsidies are designed by a caring, compassionate government to be a hand up instead of a handout. 

They may be packaged as generous gifts, but they are intended to be powerful and addictive drugs. Which, in fact, they are.  

People, businesses, and state and local governments have been hooked on these drugs so long, they can’t imagine life without them.  Like true addicts, they’ll do almost anything to get that next fix.  They’ll lie about how much money they make, they’ll lie about how much help they need, they’ll pretend to be destitute when they’re not, all to keep these drugs flowing. 

At every step they’ll have the media helping to make the case for them.  The media will put out slanted stories about how essential all these programs and handouts are.  If these aren’t continued and enhanced children will starve, jobs will be lost, families will be made homeless, women will die, there will be mayhem in the streets, cities will burn down, the sick and elderly will meet nasty ends, and of course grinding poverty will get worse. 

Honestly, the Federal government encourages this view – it feeds its propagandists in the media with half-truths, misleading stats and sob stories out of context to make America feel ashamed that so much remains to be done to take care of the less fortunate among us.  And how much what seems to be a naked political payoff is really an “investment in our future.”      

At the same time it actually advertises to recruit as many future addicts as possible, going the extra step to produce ads in multiple languages so even recent immigrants can learn how to get in on the action.  The drugs are made to appear so attractive, so easy to get, and so much a part of a “normal“ American lifestyle that taking them almost seems like the patriotic and right thing to do.  Only a fool would say no to such beneficence – and that’s part of the pitch.   

This is what’s happened with food stamps, TANF, tax credits, subsidies, extended unemployment comp, and entitlements in general.  Government and politicians are actively promoting these to demonstrate how much they “care” about us.  In reality they are pushers with an agenda that has virtually nothing to do with caring about the public’s well-being; they want more people and businesses dependent on them.    

You can see how successful this strategy is by the number of people in the general population who are now arranging their lives primarily around getting and keeping government benefits.  You can also see it in the growth of loan guarantees and special programs for businesses. 

That’s the system our government has created.  They’ve made it more attractive for many people to rely on benefits than on a regular job. 

They’ve also created an alternate universe that incents people and businesses to make often questionable decisions based on artificially distorted economics.

For example, realtors and homeowners are hooked on the mortgage interest deduction, which most first-time homebuyers really don’t understand.  Some homebuyers think the government is going to help them pay their mortgage, when the reality is that government is simply going to let them deduct a portion of their mortgage interest from their gross income for tax purposes.  However, I’m pretty sure many people have signed up for more home than they could afford thinking the government would cover a lot of their initial interest costs. 

When Bowles-Simpson recommended ending this costly and market-distorting program, their proposal was automatically DOA because realtors and banks were opposed.  

Then there’s the healthcare industry – which some see as almost 15% of our total economy and where costs seem to be soaring well beyond any reasonable rate of inflation.  Wonder why?

Okay, have you seen the ads for adult scooters?  You know, the ones that imply that Medicaid will pay for all or part of a new scooter?  Or the ads for diabetes testing meters?  Or the virtual wall-to-wall ads for prescription drugs on TV and in magazines? 

Do we really believe that Medicare and Medicaid, and now the coming ObamaCare, haven’t already spawned thousands upon thousands of products and schemes designed almost exclusively to get money out of these programs?   

Every time the government creates some new healthcare benefit or entitlement – or regulation – there’s sure to be some business out there ready to exploit it, from prescription drug companies, to medical supply houses, to physician group practices, to hospitals, to insurance companies, and more.   

Our entire medical system is addicted to government programs.  Which is what the Feds want. 

The general business community is no better.  Businesses that have become addicted to subsidies and credits spend millions in lobbying fees to retain and grow these – rather than investing that money into making and producing things that have real market value and provide jobs here.  They’re more interested in protecting what they have than competing in an open market.

The run up in the stock market is yet another example. 

The Fed is pumping $85-billion into the economy every month buying up worthless debt by printing increasingly worthless U.S. currency.  That means cheap money.  That means Wall Street is happy and pushing stock indices higher and higher.  For now.  Wall Street worries that if the economy improves and employment goes up – which would seem to be a good thing for most of us – the Fed will stop buying those worthless bonds.  And if that happens the market may collapse.  So they hope unemployment stays relatively high and economic recovery remains lackluster. 

Nice.  But it makes sense that from an addict’s viewpoint – it’s all about the drugs. 

So how do we end this? 

That’s hard to say.  The nation clearly isn’t ready to go cold turkey and face the pains of sudden withdrawal.  Maybe the best to hope for is that we can start the process of weaning people, businesses, and institutions off their addiction over time. 

Realistic means testing for benefits and entitlements would be a good place to begin, along with zero tolerance for benefits fraud.  We all know there’s absolutely no reason in the world we should have as many people as we do now on food stamps, or entire generations of people who’ve never known any other lifestyle than being on the public dole. We also know there's incredible waste and outright theft in the Medicare and Medicaid programs; that needs to be stopped and the perpetrators prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.  

Throwing more money after the same problems over and over again and expecting a different result is tantamount to insanity.  So the era of using tax dollars to continually repeat failed social engineering experiments has to end.  These haven't worked; if anything, many of these programs have had the opposite effect, producing institutionalized poverty and a permanent, self-perpetuating underclass.       

Last, but certainly not least, the tax code needs to be overhauled to strip out all the specious credits, subsidies and special tax treatments that rob the U.S. Treasury and reward people and businesses for doing what they should do already, without an extra incentive.  

That’s how I would begin to end our addiction. 

It won’t be easy.  Yet as is often said, the first step in recovery is to admit you have a problem. 

As a nation, we seem unable to do that.  But until we do, our collective addiction will only get worse, and stopping it will inevitably grow more painful.    

You can’t make this stuff up …

Sometimes I feel like the chronicler of the insane.  Or maybe I’m the one who is crazy …

I read things that are so obviously counter to what many of us believe in, and the values we expect this country to have, and yet this stuff just blows by the vast majority who either don’t see the idiocy or have decided that it’s perfectly okay.  It’s downright scary.   

The other day, NBC’s Lester Holt interviewed some guy – “single working dad” – who was up for a raise, but instead asked for a pay cut so he could keep his childcare benefits. 

Here’s a link to the story on NBCnews.com: http://rockcenter.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/23/15998838-working-single-dad-takes-pay-cut-to-keep-childcare-benefits?lite

Now the point they were apparently trying to make was how unfair the system is that to preserve benefits some people have to keep their earnings below a “cliff” level.  Earn too much and you no longer qualify for food stamps, housing assistance, or in this guy’s case $1700 a month to subsidize child care for his three kids.  Worse yet, because of budget cuts, the income qualification cutoff was lowered in his state from $50000 HHI to $41000 HHI.  Hence his request for a pay cut, so he’d keep his benefits. 

There are so many things wrong with this story.  First, it’s another variation on what I like to call “children as hostages” stories.  Next, where’s mom?  Why is this guy taking care of three kids on his own?  If you can’t afford to support three kids, why in God’s name did you have them? 

And since when – and in what perverted universe – does it make more sense to praise this guy as a hero/victim when he’s clearly gaming the system rather than someone who tries to increase their earnings to be more self-sufficient?

Hell of a life lesson to be teaching his kids. 

But I’m sure there are many who read this stupid story and thought “how sad for him.”  Others probably thought “hey, maybe I could do that, too.” 

Instead of a hero, this guy’s the poster child for a lot of what’s wrong today. 

When government makes it much more financially attractive to underachieve and avoid success, then something is way, way off kilter in our collective value system. 

Yet you know it’s not unusual anymore.  It’s becoming the norm.  This chiseling, gaming, and rampant abuse of originally well-intended programs is epidemic.  Hell, it’s actually encouraged. 

The government clearly is trying to make more and more of the public dependent on its programs. From food stamps, to free meals at public schools, to subsidized child care, housing, mortgages, student loans, and even cellphones, it’s fostering a nation of junkies who crave that next hit of government largesse to get through the day.   

And will vote however necessary to keep the fixes coming.  That’s the key. 

Every “fix” creates more problems as people and institutions learn how to twist them to their advantage.  The consequences may be unintended, but certainly not unpredictable.  

One reason daycare has become so expensive is because providers know their customers are often getting some kind of tax credit or subsidy to offset the cost. 

Colleges and universities know students can borrow more through subsidized loans so they‘ve been able to raise their prices far faster than inflation. 

Students know they can borrow for practically anything remotely considered “education,” regardless of whether it has any probability of leading to a decent paying job.  Then, because they know they can defer payments until they graduate, and college is a lot more entertaining than work, they stay in school adding even more debt. 

So now student loan debt is approaching a staggering 1.1-trillion dollars; larger than credit card debt and only surpassed by mortgage debt.  

But I’m pretty sure many of those students aren’t terribly concerned about paying that back.  They expect something will happen so they won’t have to pay the full tab.  And why shouldn’t they?   

Consider this:  The Huffington Post ran a story on May 17 about how outraged many Democrat legislators were that the Department of Education was slated to make a profit – that’s right a profit – of about $51 billion on student borrowers this year. 

Now the only reason this program is showing a profit at present is that the spread between student loan interest rates and the interest rate at which the government borrows is temporarily large.  The CBO expects the interest rate the government pays on the money it borrows to double over the next decade. 

But that doesn’t matter, of course.  Those enraged legislators called for an immediate and significant restructuring of the program to provide “substantially lower interest rates and debt forgiveness for struggling borrowers. “  In essence, they want to make sure that the program doesn’t turn a profit; at best, in their view, it will lose money down the road.

Let’s see … we’re drowning in debt as a nation.  A branch of the government is actually making money and there’s a movement in Congress among Democrats to make sure that ends ASAP. 

You couldn’t make this up. 

Logically, when you lower the cost of something, people consume more of it and use it more wastefully.  So what we want to do is encourage more students to borrow even more money, get further in debt, and then let those who have no intention of paying back loans they wasted on getting a degree in something that has no market value off the hook entirely? 

Have I got this right?  

Hell of a concept.