Well, if you don't live in a jack-booted theocracy, you can always create one in your imagination, right? That's what Colbert King does in today's Washington Post; and it's a pretty roundabout way to go in order to for him to expose his economic ignorance, but I guess he has to use at least 500 words today....
Darrell's barbershop was as quiet as a monastery this Saturday morning -- an alarming development in a shop that always does a booming business on weekends..."Man, this place is usually jumping about now," Darrell said.
"Think the police are conducting another roundup of brothers?" asked Fatmouth, putting into words their worst fear. Peering out the shop's picture window, he said, "Man, the streets are empty".
A police roundup of "brothers"? Er, Colbert, remember how it was the Democrats who fought the concept of desegregation down to the final filibuster, and have a sitting Senator who was a former Klansman, and how...oh, never mind. Why let the facts get in the way of the fantasy?
"Jerome, where's everybody?"
This time, Jerome didn't play around.
"Man, they're gone," he said.
"What'd you mean 'gone'?" asked Boogie, anxiety rising in his voice.
"Read my lips," Jerome said, grinning. "Gone as in -- gone to Iraq"
"....Around midnight, nine busloads of young men left our community for Iraq. Lord knows how they're gonna get there, once they reach New York. But those young brothers are Baghdad-bound," he said.
And why are these poor "brothers" taking "buses" to Iraq? Why, to get jobs, of course!
With a wistful smile, Mr. Carl read aloud a quote from Army Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the top U.S. field commander in Iraq: "We need to put the angry young men to work."
That, Anderson Carl told the assembled in Darrell's barbershop, is why our own jobless and angry young brothers are trying their best to get to Iraq.
Grabbing his hat and rushing out the door, Jerome exclaimed: "Baghdad, here I come!"
Colbert King is commenting on a Bush Administration plan to re-open shuttered factories in Iraq in order to get the economy there moving again; of course he feels that the same types of programs should be operating in America. I guess they would be set-asides for unemployed black folk only; since those are the only people he seems to mention in his tale of fascist America.
But too much time in the barbershop has sheltered Mr. King to some key facts:
- unemployment is around 4.5%; among the lowest (if not the lowest) in any iundustrial nation. Jobs a bit harder to come by in the "'hood"? No doubt; but I see plenty of successful black men and women every day. Most of them, however, don't have gold bridgework, talk like gangsters, dress like thugs, or were supporting multiple children before they were 21. Any thought about critisizing the culture that reaps this unemployment? No, it's intellectually easier to just bash George Bush instead! Yee-Haw!
-the stock market closed yesterday with the Dow at 12445.52, near an all-time high. Glitter for the rich? Well, they'll make their share, but King would do well to remember that most middle-class blacks (as well as most non-union Americans nowadays) have their retirement in 401(k) plans. They'll live better in their retirement, and be less likely to fall under state care in their old age, in this economic climate. Still want to talk strictly about poor blacks? If you and the Democratic party hadn't fought so hard against allowing people to push some of their future Social Security payments into the stock market, the black community would literally be more wealthy today, and with better prospects for tomorrow, than they currently are under your "rely on the government" policy of economics. Well, I guess the point of King's theories are "screw Bush!", and if black people suffer down the road, well, they are simply collateral damage. Kings answer seems to be - send them off to Bagdad...
-finally, government jobs programs simply do not work. Taxing business (who always wind up paying) in order to create "job training programs" and the such is insane; cutting taxes on business so that they can grow and create more jobs is what actually works in reality (see Bush tax cuts, Dow at 12445.52, the 4.5% unemployment rate, and this - Consumer prices flat in November ). Job programs are good for the community rabble-rousers (that whole vicious feeding chain with Al Sharpton on top of the pyramid) who show them off as evidence of their power and influence; they usually wind up empty, ignored, and shuttered....
But shhhh! Don't tell Colbert King! He's too busy nodding off again, drifting into his twisted liberal dreamworld where young black men hop buses to Iraq in order to avoid the midnight roundup of Dick Cheney's stormtroopers...nighty-night, Colbert.....
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*Yawn* what, oh yeah another wounded Bushie, I told you not to go hunting with Dick Cheney. The counter commentary I just read seems like the old apples and oranges argument, they are two different fruits and your reponse seems to have left out the main point of Mr. King's commentary. Simply stated, Mr. Bush, supposedly elected to serve American's interests, seems to have forgotten which country he serves. The money being spent for these "jobs" programs might be better spent here, or does that agrieve you to invest in the homeland? Say for instance New Orleans after Katrena. How about rebuilding our aging interstate system, or better yet, truly build a mass transit system that would end our dependance on middle eastern oil? Instead you go off on a totally different tangent talking about Mr. Bush's supposed achievments which are all illusionary at best. The employment statistics you quote are artificial as they are based on those people recieving unemployment and new unemployment filings. They do not represent those people who have lost their unemployment and are ineligable. Especially those who had their jobs outsorced to India, China, etc.
The stockmarket is not an indicator of the country's prosperity. Economically when the country flurished after WWII, the stockmarket remained relativly stable, and shareholders look forward to dividend earnings as opposed to quick trades. Oh and that brings me back to my first counterpoint regarding national employment. Many people today that lost their jobs as noted earlier have returned to work yes indeed, but not in tenured positions with standard benefits that have those nice 401k's you mention. They are employed as agency contrat workers and are not offered those wonderful earnings offered by the market.
Finally, very shortly the market will come down, hard! Mr. Bush who has with Republican approval recklessly spent to pursue a war that was little more then a personal vendetta, created the largest deficit this country has known. One that will be beggering my great grandchildren, created the largest buerocracy, the Department of Homeland Security, that even under the lose Republican oversight has been caught scandilously mismanaging our tax dollars.
Why bother with job programs? With the cost of one years expenses to muck things up in Iraq, I could divy that money up to each US citizen, and by today's standards they could all retire and live comfortably. Tax business, who's taxed them? George Bush and company just gave oil companies and the like a tax break after they reported a 64 billion dollar quarterly profit, not annual, but quarterly!
Forget economic theory, it has to be mathimatically substanciated. If your household budget is fifty thousand a year, you cannot live as if it were fifty million. Alas though, your Republicans got you to buy this line. Clinton who balanced the budget, and gave us a surplus claimed he never "inhaled". Bush and company not only inhaled but theirs was laced with something and they wrote this crazy fantasy called "Americans in Wonderland".
The final irony of your post was you missed the true meaning Mr. King's artical. Those "angry young men" are on the bus to Iraq. Their bus driver's names are Mr. Army, Mr. Marine, Mr. Navey and Air Force. Where do you think the recruiters get their bodies to fill uniforms? They are recruiting in impoverished neighborhoods. Hell, I'll give you a front page insider tip. Our angry young men aren't so angry as to lose their heads. Mr. Bush and his traveling sideshow are going to countries like Peru, and other latin american countries offering impoverished famlies six hundred dollars and US citizenship if the give their angry young son's to the armed forces for six years. Yes Mr. isolated New Jersey, we've outsourced our military.
I know it's hard to see past the skyline of New York where you are, but please try to get out of the shadow and see what's really going on.
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