On the issue of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s defenders attempt to make you feel insane. How could you bring up the Rev. Jeremiah Wright?! It “injects race” into the contest! Obama supporters warn, “After four years, how dare you ‘re-litigate’ the matter!”

In fact, it was never “litigated” in the first place.

2008 Republican candidate John McCain feared being accused of playing the race card. But Wright is not about “race.” It is much, much bigger than that. Wright is about Obama’s character, beliefs and policies. The question remains the same one that should have been addressed four years ago: Do Obama and Wright share the same view of “social injustice,” a perspective that reveals Obama’s character and beliefs — and reflects his current and future policies?

Obama, in 2007, described the 20-year father/son-like relationship this way: “What I value most about Pastor Wright is not his day-to-day political advice. He’s much more of a sounding board for me to make sure that I am speaking as truthfully about what I believe as possible and that I’m not losing myself in some of the hype and hoopla and stress that’s involved in national politics.”

But Wright is off-limits.

Obama was probably the most surprised politician in America when McCain refused to jam Wright down Obama’s throat — as Obama would most assuredly have if the situation were reversed. Reluctant to “inject race”? Obama’s hand-picked chair of the Democratic National Committee routinely accuses the Republicans of wanting “to literally drag us all the way back to Jim Crow laws.” People forget the bare-knuckled way Obama got every serious opponent kicked off the ballot in his first Illinois state Senate race — and was therefore elected with no serious opposition.

But Wright, who described himself as a “second father” to Obama, is off-limits.

Obama selected Trinity United. He selected the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Wright married Barack and Michelle. He blessed their home in Hyde Park.

He baptized the Obamas’ daughters. Obama initially wanted Wright to deliver the invocation when Obama announced his run for the presidency.

The real question is this: What took black church leaders so long to reconsider their near blind support for the Democratic Party?

The historical strength of black churches has been that of a moral and spiritual refuge in a once-hostile country of legalized slavery and Jim Crow. This explains why so many civil rights leaders came out of the church. The moral cause was just and clear: Equal rights mean equal rights — for everyone.

But equal rights and equal results are two very different things. The modern civil rights movement lost its way by failing to appreciate the difference. To achieve “equal results,” the Democratic Party, among other things, demands redistribution of wealth, a government response to the “gap” between the rich and poor, higher minimum wages and higher taxes on the so-called rich.

The Democratic Party opposes education vouchers, despite polls showing that black and Hispanic inner-city parents want them. The Democratic Party is the party of race-based preferences and also opposes privatization of Social Security.

The Democratic Party is the party of the welfare state — a neutron bomb dropped on the intact nuclear family. Author/editor/professor Marvin Olasky, in his book “The Tragedy of American Compassion,” traces the growth of welfare. During a mere three-year period in the 1960s, welfare rolls increased nearly 110 percent. President Johnson established “neighborhood centers” whose workers went door-to-door, apprising people of their welfare “rights and benefits.”

Until the so-called “War on Poverty,” the poverty rate declined steadily. At the turn of the century, nearly 70 percent of Americans were poor. But by the time of the “War on Poverty,” the rate stood at approximately 13 or 14 percent. What happened? Welfare created dependency and decreased the incentive of the welfare recipient.

Yet, in the 20 minutes of my sitting and listening in the car in bad Los Angeles traffic, I heard no one mention the words “President Barack Obama.”

Time magazine, in a cover story on the economy, called the current economic recovery a “97-pound weakling.” It informs us that our sluggish economy is now driven by broad, virtually uncontrollable worldwide economic trends. Only once in this lengthy article did Time mention Obama — and only to say that Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney “plans to use the economy as a hammer against President Obama.”

That’s it. The President, Mr. Hope-and-Change, you see, is powerless to do anything about the economy. None of that “the buck stops here” stuff for him.

Investor’s Business Daily writes that our neighbor up north sees things differently: “The Obama administration and its economic czars have flailed about for years, baffled about how to get the U.S. economy growing. In reality, the president need look no further than our neighbor, Canada, whose solid growth is the product of tax cuts, fiscal discipline, free trade and energy development. That’s made Canada a roaring puma nation, while its supposedly more powerful southern neighbor stands on the outside looking in.”

Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said: “Creating jobs and growth in our economy is our top propriety. … We are creating the conditions for businesses to successfully compete in the global economy by investing in Canada and creating jobs and growth for all Canadians. Through our government’s low-tax plan … we are continuing to send the message that Canada is open for business and the best place to invest.”

What about the economies of our 50 states? If Obama is powerless to do anything about the economy, surely the states alone are at least as impotent?

But low-tax states outperform high-tax states. Seven states have no personal income taxes (PIT) — Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington and Wyoming. Two states tax only income on interest and dividends — New Hampshire and Tennessee. The average state and local revenue growth of these nine states from 2000 to 2009 was 81.53 percent.

Average revenue growth in the nine states with the highest PIT rates — Ohio, Maine, Maryland, Vermont, New Jersey, California, Oregon, Hawaii and New York — was 44.88 percent.

Similarly, gross state product growth from 2001 to 2010 averaged 58.54 percent in the nine states with no PIT versus 42.06 in the nine states with the highest PIT rates.

Religion, to many liberals, is a sign of weakness, a demonstration of the inability to reason for oneself. With the Bible telling him what to do, how to think, what to believe — why, such a person is downright scary. Recall Obama explaining how small-town Midwesterners deal with difficult economic times: “They get bitter,” as the then-presidential candidate put it. “They cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them … as a way to explain their frustrations.”

When, however, the left uses religion to justify expanding the Welfare State, well, invoking God becomes perfectly acceptable. During the last National Prayer Breakfast, for example, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer praised how “movingly” Obama spoke about the way his religion informs his policies.

Take Los Angeles Times columnist David Lazarus. In a recent column, he uses religion to denounce those who oppose ObamaCare: “These critics seldom acknowledge other aspects of the law aimed at helping insure some of the roughly 50 million people in this country who now lack coverage. That’s an act of pure selfishness. … It’s also a display of heartlessness unbefitting a country that claims to define itself by love-thy-neighbor Judeo-Christian values.” (Emphasis added.)

Judeo-Christian values? In caring for the needy, scripture dictates that The State supplant individuals, community, houses of worship and other nonprofits in helping care for the needy?

Tell this to the Rev. Robert Sirico, of the free-market think tank Acton Institute. Whether arguing for government programs like Medicare, Medicaid or even Social Security, the first question to ask is a moral one: Does turning the business of compassion over to the state harm us as a society and damage us in ways proponents fail to consider?

In his 1999 piece “Morality and Social Security,” Sirico says Social Security’s biggest failing is that it creates a culture of dependency:

“Is it right that the young be taxed to enable the government to provide a generous retirement program for able-bodied older people? What are the social and moral implications of this idea?

“The very existence of Social Security has convinced tens of millions of people that government-mandated savings are utterly necessary for security in our later years.

Lawrence O’Donnell, only days later, gave his viewers a historical tutorial on the Mormon religion, darkly suggesting that we all should be afraid, very afraid. The Democratic governor of Montana, Brian Schweitzer, called Mitt Romney’s grandfather a “polygamist.”

This is actually good news for the Romney campaign.

By making Romney’s Mormonism an issue, the Obama campaign has, as trial lawyers like to say, “reopened” the issue of religion. The Romney campaign can therefore revisit the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Obama’s close relationship to him. True, Obama apparently severed ties to Wright, but Obama did so only after the very salvation of his first presidential campaign depended upon it.

Wright, Obama’s pastor for some 20 years, was described by Obama as his “spiritual advisor.” Wright married the Obamas, baptized their children and blessed their home. One of Wright’s friends is the anti-Semitic advocate of racial separatism, Minister Louis Farrakhan. “Trumpet Magazine,” published by Wright’s daughter and formerly promoted on the church’s website, once honored Farrakhan in a cover story as a man who “truly epitomized greatness.” In the article, Wright lauded Farrakhan as “one of the 20th and 21st century giants of the African-American religious experience.”

There is, of course, the infamous YouTube excerpt of Wright shouting: “We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. … We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.” And understand, Wright gave this blistering attack against America the Sunday after 9-11!

In his autobiography, “Dreams From My Father,” Obama tells of how he met Wright. Obama made an appointment at Wright’s church to see the pastor. Wright was late. While waiting, Obama spoke with Wright’s assistant, a single mom whose husband had just died. She told Obama that she intended to leave the city and move to the suburbs to escape the violence.

She also wanted her son to attend a better school. Her son, she said, would like to join a band, and his current school didn’t have one. His future school had a band and free uniforms.

When the man who became president of the United States says this — the No. 1 law enforcement officer — it must, therefore, be true.

Let’s examine five major assumptions behind this assertion.

1) Blacks are arrested at higher rates compared to whites — but wrongly so.

Not true. While only 13 percent of the population, blacks accounted for 28 percent of nationwide arrests in 2010 and 38.1 percent of arrests for violent crime (murders, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault). But are they unfairly arrested? Studies find that arrest rates by race are comparable to the race of suspect identification by victims.

For example, in a given city, x number of robbery victims describe their assailants as black — whether or not the suspect has been apprehended. It turns out that the race of those arrested matches the percentage given by victims. This has been found repeatedly across the country, in all categories of crime where the race of an assailant is identified. So unless the victims are deliberately misidentifying their assailants — unconcerned about whether the suspect is apprehended and knowingly give a false race — blacks are not being “over-arrested.”

2) Blacks are convicted at higher rates and given longer sentences than whites for the same crime.

Not true. Differences in conviction and sentencing rates by race are due to differences in the gravity of the criminal offenses, prior records or other legal variables. A 1994 Justice Department survey of felony cases in the country’s 75 largest urban areas actually found lower felony prosecution rates for blacks than whites and that blacks were less likely to be found guilty at trial.

3) The sentence disparity between powder and crack cocaine is racist and accounts for a large percentage of imprisoned blacks.

Not true. Concerned about the deadly effect of crack within their own communities, black members of Congress led the charge to pass the 1986 federal drug laws. The bill that was passed — which included the crack/powder sentencing disparity — did so with the support of the majority of black congresspersons.

None at the time objected to the sentencing disparity as “racist.”

In 2006, the feds tried 5,619 crack sellers, and 4,495 of them were black — out of the 562,000 blacks in state and federal prisons at the end of that year. Add in county and city jails, and the figure rises to 858,000. And states’ crack cocaine laws are not the culprits. Only 13 states employ differing sentencing guidelines for crack vs. powder — and their differential is much smaller than that of the feds.

California taxpayers spend $2.8 billion to educate the more than 230,000 students at the 10 campuses that comprise the UC system. But the report says the UC system does not help students learn how to think, but rather teaches them what to think. And what they “learn” is that they are victims — whether of racism, sexism, classism or discrimination because of sexual orientation. Liberal profs, says the report, turn the UC campuses into “a sanctuary for a narrow ideological segment of the spectrum of social and political ideas.”

Nationwide, left-wing professors vastly outnumber conservative professors in the humanities. It isn’t even close.

The report cites several studies, including political scientist Stanley Rothman’s 1999 study: “Whether the question was posed in terms of liberals versus conservatives or Democrats versus Republicans, the margins favored the former by nearly 5-to-1 in each case, and in some departments the results were overwhelming. For example, in English departments the margin was 88-to-3, and in politics 81-to-2.”

A different 2007 study, says the report, found the 5-to-1 margin between liberal versus conservative professors had become 8-to-1. Almost 20 percent of professors in social sciences and 25 percent of sociology professors self-identifies as “Marxist.”

And things are getting worse. Younger professors tend to be even more liberal than older ones. Among UC Berkeley’s associate and assistant professors, according to one study, registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by 49-to-1 in all departments — including sciences. When Berkeley associates and assistants replace the older professors as they retire, the extreme 8-to-1 tilt in favor of liberal profession could reach 50-to-1.

UC Berkeley professor Robert Anderson, the critic whom Ellis accuses of “lying,” called the report “short on facts, but long on innuendo and anecdotes.” Is it? The 87-page report looked at course descriptions, books assigned, faculty’s political party registration and self-identification of ideology, and student feedback.

Students are immersed in an education that emphasizes the wrongs done to minorities, women, gays and other groups. Gender, ethnic, religious and sexual orientation grievances are highlighted as representative of an imperial, racist, exploitative capitalist superpower that continues to engage in widespread racism, sexism, homophobia and worldwide domination.

“We wuz wronged” takes center stage over a basic understanding of economics, of the concept of federalism, and of the values that turned a struggling bunch of colonies into a political and economic superpower.

Indeed, the very mission statements of many departments on UC campuses stress their commitment to activism for enacting social change, or to bring about social or racial or fill-in-the-blank justice.

Is it because an innocent black teenager lost his life at the hands of a man, George Zimmerman, who “racially profiled” him? Is it that the victim is black and the shooter was not? Is it because the major media push the narrative that white anti-black racism remains an “unresolved” national issue? Is it because “civil rights activist” and MSNBC host Al Sharpton demands the shooter’s arrest, threatening peaceful civil disobedience and “economic sanctions”?

If violent black-white crime generates headlines, where were the media after the sickening racially motivated assault that occurred in Long Beach, Calif., on Halloween night, 2006?

Three young white women were brutally kicked, punched and beaten by a mostly black mob of 30 to 40 teens and adults. According to witnesses, during the rampage the mob yelled: “We hate white people. F—- whites!” Yet only two local papers reported the story, and one — the Los Angeles Times — published its article a full week after the attack! National Public Radio got around to mentioning Long Beach a month later, but only to raise the question of whether blacks, given America’s history of racism, can even commit a “hate crime.”

The way The New York Times covered the 1991 Crown Heights, N.Y., riots shows how the major media downplay black violence. A Columbia University professor called the three days of anti-Semitic rioting “a modern-day pogrom.”

The Crown Heights riots started after a 7-year-old black child was killed in a traffic accident when a car driven by a Hasidic Jew went out of control. The Rev. Sharpton led 400 protesters through the Jewish section of Crown Heights, with one protester holding a sign that read, “The White Man Is the Devil.” During the ensuing nights of rock- and bottle-throwing, nearly 200 people suffered injuries. Surrounded by a mob yelling, “Kill the Jew!” a young Talmudic scholar, Yankel Rosenbaum, was stabbed to death.

Last year, on the 20th anniversary of the Crown Heights riots, Rosenbaum’s brother wrote: “It was Sharpton who repeatedly bellowed to the rioters, ‘No justice, no peace!’ And Sharpton claims his remarks at Gavin Cato’s funeral were misinterpreted. Here is what he said … :

‘Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights.

]]> http://frontpagemag.com/2012/04/05/murder-victims-that-dont-matter-to-the-left-wing-media/feed/ 20 http://frontpagemag.com/2012/03/22/obamacare-still-a-disaster/ http://frontpagemag.com/2012/03/22/obamacare-still-a-disaster/#comments Thu, 22 Mar 2012 04:10:28 +0000 Larry Elder http://frontpagemag.com/?p=126482 “I am a refugee,” my anesthesiologist told me after I had awakened from my third surgery in 12 years — one to repair a muscle tear in my left shoulder and two for the same disc in my lower back. “I am part of the British ‘brain drain’ of the late ’60s. Doctors could not make any money. So I left.” Britain’s loss, my gain. The same surgery 12 years ago required a two-day stay in a hospital. Last week, after a two-hour surgery, I left the same day as an outpatient.

But under ObamaCare, we can expect a loss of talent and a decline in quality of care. Thousands of us, the doctor explained, abandoned England to practice medicine in America. “So, how’s this?” my doctor said. “I left the U.K. to get away from the government telling me how to practice, what to charge — and now we are getting the same thing. ObamaCare stinks, and the people will regret it. What happened to the docs there will happen here.”

Great Britain began practicing socialized medicine through the taxpayer-funded National Health Services in 1948. And indeed, one of the first U.K. studies on the emigration of their native-born physicians, “British Doctors at Home and Abroad,” published in 1964, noted that, beginning in the 1950s, their docs were leaving for “high-income” countries at an alarming rate: “Many of them stressed the wider field of work they could undertake in general practice abroad and criticized the limited role of the general practitioner in England.” And nearly half a century later, Britain’s “brain drain” continues.

Medical advances require research and development. And as much as government spends on health care and medical research, the private sector spends much more. But ObamaCare places a tax on medical equipment manufacturers, to raise $20 billion for the federal coffers when it goes into full effect in 2013. As a result, some medical device manufacturers are already closing up shop or downsizing to reflect lower profits under ObamaCare. Some canceled plans for new U.S. plants, looking to other parts of the world. Many manufacturers have already announced significant layoffs, and most also look to other alternatives, including cutting research and development, and passing along the tax’s costs to the patients.

In addition to the excise tax on medical device manufacturers, ObamaCare imposes many more taxes, including the following: an individual mandate excise tax for adults who don’t purchase “qualifying” health insurance; an employer mandate tax for those companies who don’t offer health coverage; and a surtax on investment income — making the rate as high as 43.4 percent on gross income from interest, annuities, royalties, net rents and passive income for families making more than $250,000.

Given this, will we see the same private-sector investments in the health care field, as ObamaCare imposes ever more regulations designed at increasing “accessibility” and “controlling costs”?

What about costs?

]]> http://frontpagemag.com/2012/03/22/obamacare-still-a-disaster/feed/ 111 http://frontpagemag.com/2012/03/15/wheres-sharptons-apology-for-accusing-a-white-man-of-raping-a-black-teen/ http://frontpagemag.com/2012/03/15/wheres-sharptons-apology-for-accusing-a-white-man-of-raping-a-black-teen/#comments Thu, 15 Mar 2012 04:15:27 +0000 Larry Elder http://frontpagemag.com/?p=125688 “Meet the Press” host David Gregory asked his panel “where civility has gone in our public discourse.” Incredibly, one panelist urged people to be more “mature” and not “poison the atmosphere.”

I say “incredibly” because this panelist was none other than the race-hustling, anti-Semitic “civil rights activist” and MSNBC talk show host, Al Sharpton. For some reason, Sharpton’s own struggles with civility never came up. Nor did any panelist behave so rudely as to bring up Sharpton’s role in one of the most hideous, disgusting and cynical uses of the race card this side of the O.J. Simpson case. And Sharpton, unlike Rush Limbaugh, refuses to apologize.

While this raises little or no concern to MSNBC or its advertisers, Sharpton became famous by falsely accusing a white man of raping a black teenage girl. Tawana Brawley, then 15, told authorities that white racists abducted, raped and sodomized her — scrawling the initials “KKK” on her in human feces.

A grand jury later found the entire incident a complete hoax. This did not stop the Rev. Al Sharpton, who had accused Steven Pagones, then an assistant district attorney in Duchess County, N.Y., of the crime. After Sharpton’s accusation, Pagones received death threats, and his young daughter was later threatened.

“We stated openly that Steven Pagones did it,” said Sharpton. “If we’re lying, sue us, so we can go into court with you and prove you did it. Sue us — sue us right now.”

Pagones did sue.

A jury unanimously concluded that Sharpton defamed Pagones, ordering Sharpton to pay him $65,000. The Reverend promptly and publicly said he did not intend to pay. Later, when Sharpton decided to run for president, the outstanding defamation debt became a political problem. So Sharpton’s one-percenter buddies passed the hat and paid off his debt, which by then totaled $87,000 with interest and penalties.

Civility, Rev. Al? In 1989, a young white woman, dubbed the “Central Park jogger,” was monstrously raped and nearly beaten to death. Sharpton insisted — despite the defendants’ confessions — that her black attacker-suspects were innocent, modern-day Scottsboro Boys trapped in “a fit of racial hysteria.” Sharpton charged that the jogger’s boyfriend did it and organized protests outside the courthouse, chanting, “The boyfriend did it!” and denouncing the victim as a “whore!”

Sharpton appealed for a psychiatrist to examine the victim, generously saying: “It doesn’t even have to be a black psychiatrist.

… We’re not endorsing the damage to the girl — if there was this damage.” (The convictions of the accused were eventually vacated, despite their taped confessions, after another man — whose DNA matched — confessed to the rape in 2002.)

]]> http://frontpagemag.com/2012/03/15/wheres-sharptons-apology-for-accusing-a-white-man-of-raping-a-black-teen/feed/ 23 http://frontpagemag.com/2012/03/01/pbs-clinton-documentary-lies-about-the-economy/ http://frontpagemag.com/2012/03/01/pbs-clinton-documentary-lies-about-the-economy/#comments Thu, 01 Mar 2012 04:35:36 +0000 Larry Elder http://frontpagemag.com/?p=124188 Public Television touted the Bill Clinton documentary as a long-awaited warts-and-all piece. USA Today called the two-parter a “solid and even-handed account … of a remarkably skillful politician with an immense intellect.” While calling it “tedious and predictable,” The Washington Post described the documentary as “honest.”

In the first hour, the documentary stumbled out of the gate. If it were a racehorse, they’d have to put it down. The whopper we get hit with right away and again and again is this: Clinton inherited a recession — not an economy that long ago came out of a recession. Never mind that 1993 — 19 years ago — is within the living memory of many Americans. Yet we are repeatedly told that Clinton entered office under a full-on economic meltdown.

The narrator says: “Heading into the fall (of l992) … with the economy still faltering. …”

The narrator later says, “As Clinton took office in the winter of 1993, the economic crisis that had propelled him into office showed few signs of abating.”

Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin adds: “We had had a recession. We had high unemployment. And it was a lot of uncertainty about whether the United States was going to get on its feet again or whether we could be in for a prolonged period of real difficulty. So he came into a very difficult environment.”

Journalist Joe Klein describes Clinton’s first budget battle, in the late summer of ’93, as a gamble “in the midst of a recession.”

And midway through the piece, the narrator informs us that “by the fall of 1994, the economy was growing again.”

This is simply extraordinary, mind-boggling.

Whether Bill Clinton was a good president, whether he deserves the credit for balanced budgets and projected surpluses or whether he should have been impeached are matters about which reasonable people can and do disagree. But whether Bill Clinton entered office “in the midst of a recession” and whether, in the fall of ’92 and the winter of ’93, the economy was “still faltering” and “showed few signs of abating” — these are matters of fact.

The National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Mass., is the official keeper of the U.S. business cycle. It defines a recession as “a period of diminishing (economic) activity.” It tracks when recessions begin (a “peak” — the month when a period of economic growth ends and a downturn begins) and when recessions end (a “trough” — the month when the downturn bottoms out and the economy begins to grow again).

Bill Clinton entered office in January 1993.

According to the NBER, did he inherit a recession? Not even close. The recession began in July 1990 and ended eight months later, in March 1991 — a full 19 months before Clinton was even elected.

]]> http://frontpagemag.com/2012/03/01/pbs-clinton-documentary-lies-about-the-economy/feed/ 19 http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/23/samuel-l-jackson-vote-your-race/ http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/23/samuel-l-jackson-vote-your-race/#comments Thu, 23 Feb 2012 04:13:47 +0000 Larry Elder http://frontpagemag.com/?p=123365

What if actor Clint Eastwood gave an interview in which he explained why, in the 2008 presidential election, he voted for John McCain: “I voted for McCain because he was white. ‘Cuz that’s why other folks vote for other people — because they look like them. … That’s American politics, pure and simple.”

No, Eastwood did not say that. But actor Samuel L. Jackson did, in explaining why he voted for President Barack Obama — “because he was black.” Jackson also said his vote had nothing to do with Obama’s agenda: “(Obama’s) message didn’t mean (bleep) to me.” If Eastwood had said stuff like this, a cry to boycott his films would come from everybody from the NAACP to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

But the popular Jackson, who played in more films during the ’90s than any other actor, makes an incredibly racist statement and it’s … yawn.

Jackson insists he just does what every voter does. If they did, Obama could not have been elected U.S. senator from Illinois (15 percent of the state is black, 72 percent white) or the president of the United States (13 percent black, 72 percent white).

How does Jackson explain Obama’s election in a country where people vote their race? Simple, you see. Obama isn’t really a black man — at least as defined by Jackson: “When it comes down to it, they wouldn’t have elected a (n-word). … A (n-word) is scary. Obama ain’t scary at all. (N-words) don’t have beers at the White House. (N-words) don’t let some white dude, while you in the middle of a speech, call (him) a liar. A (n-word) would have stopped the meeting right there and said, ‘Who the (bleep) said that?’” White voters, according to Jackson, voted for Obama because they found him un-black or semi-black or quasi-black.

Obama did, in fact, lose the white vote — as has every white Democrat presidential candidate since 1964. But Obama outperformed Democrat John Kerry, who ran in 2004, pulling in 43 percent of the white vote to Kerry’s 41 percent.

How does the vote-my-race Jackson explain the 2010 elections of black House Republicans Tim Scott and Allen West, in South Carolina and Florida, respectively? Scott won in a district that is 75 percent white and 21 percent black. West won in a district that is 82 percent white and 4 percent black.

Polls repeatedly show that only a small percentage of Americans refuse to vote for a black person. A 2006 Times/Bloomberg poll found that 3 percent of voters would not vote for an otherwise qualified black candidate.

But 4 percent wouldn’t vote for a woman, and 14 percent ruled out voting for a Mormon.

What if people chose movies the Jackson way? What if blacks only saw movies about or starring other blacks? What if sports fans only saw players or teams that consisted solely of athletes who looked like them?

]]> http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/23/samuel-l-jackson-vote-your-race/feed/ 41 http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/16/whitney-houston-critics-called-her-%e2%80%98too-white/ http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/16/whitney-houston-critics-called-her-%e2%80%98too-white/#comments Thu, 16 Feb 2012 04:19:54 +0000 Larry Elder http://frontpagemag.com/?p=122658

Whitney Houston died at the age of 48. Most articles about her death said something like, “Houston struggled with drug and alcohol problems for years …”

But Houston also struggled with something else that black Republicans and black non-Democrats can understand: ridicule and ostracism for “selling out,” or “acting white,” or not being “black enough.”

Ebony, the black monthly magazine, wrote about the then-27-year-old: “Black disc jockeys have chided her for ‘not having soul’ and being ‘too white.’ … She was booed at the Soul Train Music Awards. … It’s enough to drive a good Christian girl to drink, drugs or at least to cursing. But not Whitney. Though it hurts her deeply, she handles it all with aplomb.”

Did she?

After Houston’s marriage to Bobby Brown, and after years of Houston’s erratic behavior and rumors of drug abuse, I spoke to singer-actress Della Reese, a longtime Houston family friend. Reese and I were in the greenroom of a television studio, and we talked about Reese’s career. I told her that my mother remembered having seen a young Reese at a Washington, D.C., nightclub called either “The Cave” or “The Cove.”

She laughed and said, “The Cave.”

We talked about then-current Whitney Houston/Bobby Brown headlines. “I have a theory about Whitney Houston,” I said. “I’ve been called ‘Uncle Tom,’ and I know how that feels. I think Whitney was so hurt by being called a ‘sellout’ and ‘acting white’ — and crap like that — she wanted to change her image. What better way to do that than to marry a bad boy? And the drug abuse makes her a flawed person fighting to overcome her demons. Makes her relatable.”

Reese, a close friend of Cissy Houston, Whitney’s mom, said: “I know the family well. And there’s a lot of truth in what you’re saying.” Reese gave me permission to discuss our exchange, as long as I made one thing clear. Reese said: “The human voice is very forgiving, and Whitney is working things out. And she will come back.”

Black Republicans can relate to the name-calling.

A black St. Petersburg Times columnist wrote this about black Republicans: “Some creatures are just plain strange, making us do double takes because their compositions or habits or appearances defy our sense of logic and our way of viewing reality. Take the wildebeest, the warthog, the hyena, the brown pelican, the Shar-Pei. These animals, seemingly wrought by committee, make us laugh or shake our heads.

“Another such creature, of the human kind — and perhaps the strangest of all — is the black Republican.

… Black Republicans fail to understand that white Republicans will never accept them as equals. Although they will not acknowledge the truth, white Republicans, like most other whites, view black Republicans as strange creatures.”

]]> http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/16/whitney-houston-critics-called-her-%e2%80%98too-white/feed/ 27 http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/03/democratic-tax-hypocrisy/ http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/03/democratic-tax-hypocrisy/#comments Fri, 03 Feb 2012 04:11:45 +0000 Larry Elder http://frontpagemag.com/?p=121405

Forgive Republican candidate Mitt Romney for his alleged failure to adequately explain why he paid “only” 14 percent of his income in taxes.

The honest answer — “Well, because my accountants couldn’t figure out how to get them any lower” — does not work in this or very many other election years. Romney seemed flat-footed because, like most business people, he seeks to minimize costs and expenses.

This includes taxes.

A normal wealthy-and-proud-of-it guy would have said: “Let me get this straight, pal. I’m not supposed to take every legal advantage provided me by the tax laws to reduce my taxes?” For what it’s worth, about 15 percent of Romney’s last two years of income went to charity — substantially higher than the percentage given by the Obamas or Joe Biden’s $380 (not a typo) of his quarter-million dollar income in 2006.

“Tax savings” allows people more money to save, spend, invest, bequeath and donate. On some level, even Democrats understand this.

Democrat Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., is one of them. In 2001, Massachusetts lowered it state income tax rate. But the legislature showed mercy for the Bay State’s guilt-ridden, tax-hike-supporting liberals. The tax form allowed the filer to check a special box — and pay the old, higher rate. Out of more than 3 million tax filers in 2004, a tiny fraction of 1 percent — 930 taxpayers — volunteered to pay the higher rate. Among those who declined the opportunity was Mr. Frank. Frank explained, “I don’t trust the legislative leadership and Gov. (Mitt) Romney to make the right decisions.” Instead, Frank said, “I’ll donate the money myself.” What?! Charity might better spend money than can government, which, by its nature, operates less efficiently and more expensively than can private welfare?

Democrat Sen. Howard Metzenbaum from Ohio (served 1974, 1976-1995) was another tax-supporting Democrat not too keen on paying more in taxes than he needed to. But after retirement, the wealthy Metzenbaum moved to Florida, which, unlike Ohio, is a state with no estate or personal income taxes. This saved him millions.

Democrat John Edwards’ wife Elizabeth, during the 2004 campaign, said rich politicians like her husband reveal “character” when they vote against financial “interest” by supporting higher taxes.

This is the same John Edwards who, as a trial lawyer winning big jury awards, established a separate sub-corporation to accept the money, paying him through dividends rather than income. Perfectly legal. But this allowed Edwards to avoid some $600K in Medicare payroll taxes.

]]> http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/03/democratic-tax-hypocrisy/feed/ 37 http://frontpagemag.com/2012/01/26/gingrich-declares-war-on-the-anti-republican-media/ http://frontpagemag.com/2012/01/26/gingrich-declares-war-on-the-anti-republican-media/#comments Thu, 26 Jan 2012 04:03:53 +0000 Larry Elder http://frontpagemag.com/?p=120578

The Republican re-embrace of former Speaker Newt Gingrich says a lot about whom he sees as his opponent — and it isn’t just President Barack Obama. It’s the media.

If not for major media’s embrace, Obama would still be sitting in the Senate, perhaps mulling another run for the presidency. A UCLA economist-political scientist recently tried to measure how the liberal media bias influences the way people vote. He concluded that this bias gives the Democrat candidate 8 to 10 percentage points.

Republicans understand this. So does Gingrich — on a very deep level. He knows the media dislike him above and beyond their anti-conservative Republican disdain. That he is testy, no-nonsense, whip smart and knowledgeable makes him formidable. That he engineered the 1994 GOP takeover of the House and pushed former President Bill Clinton into governing in the center makes him effective.

The good news for the media is that Gingrich is a Southern white male Christian Republican. He belongs to a group for which no advocacy organization exists to play the race/sex/religion card when Gingrich gets called — on-air by cable hosts and pundits — “racist,” “disgusting” and a “pig.”

Gingrich bites back. Hard. Thus, he addresses the question of his messy personal life while hitting the CNN moderator for bringing this up as the first question. Gingrich knows he lacks the Reaganesque “aw, shucks” persona. Reagan used his sunny disposition to counter the media’s attempt to portray him as a dangerous nutcase whose finger should never go near the nuclear button — not unlike how many try to portray Gingrich.

Gingrich will call out the media for ignoring the bombshell that Obama’s mother did not fight with her insurer over her medical bills, as Obama movingly and repeatedly told Americans in making his case for ObamaCare.

Gingrich will question why the major media behaved so indifferently for so long about matters like Obama’s 20-year association with a racist, anti-Semitic pastor.

Gingrich will ask why the press yawns when the Obama administration stops using expressions like “shovel ready,” “save or create” millions of jobs and “stimulus.”

Gingrich will remind Americans about Obama’s promise to end the influence of “lobbyists.” By any normal understanding of the term, the White House remains a lobby-rich environment where Obama officials insist on lobbyist meetings off-premises. This means there is no White House log, allowing the administration to brag about an alleged decrease in lobbying.

Gingrich will point out the hypocrisy of being called a “lobbyist” though he never registered as one.

Yet the media fail to apply this flexible definition of “lobbyist” when it comes to the Obama administration.

Gingrich will ask why the media remain so incurious about Obama’s grades at prep school, Occidental College, Columbia University and Harvard Law — even as Obama admitted, in his first book, that he wasn’t much of a student.

]]> http://frontpagemag.com/2012/01/26/gingrich-declares-war-on-the-anti-republican-media/feed/ 19 http://frontpagemag.com/2012/01/18/on-gay-marriage-media-gives-obama-a-pass/ http://frontpagemag.com/2012/01/18/on-gay-marriage-media-gives-obama-a-pass/#comments Wed, 18 Jan 2012 04:12:58 +0000 Larry Elder http://frontpagemag.com/?p=119811

Why does President Barack Obama enjoy a no-fly zone on gay marriage?

The Republican presidential contenders, with the exception of libertarian Ron Paul, have never supported gay marriage. Barack Obama, on the other hand, in a span of 16 years, has gone from supporting it, to “undecided,” to opposition, to a position that he currently describes as “evolving.”

Obama, right now, opposes gay marriage — just as does Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum. In 2008, presidential candidate Obama sounded Santorum-like when he said: “I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian … it is also a sacred union. God’s in the mix.”

When Santorum, the pro-life, anti-gay-marriage former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, was challenged in New Hampshire by pro-same-sex-marriage teenagers, he attempted to use the Socratic method to explain his opposition:

“How does it affect you, personally, if two men or two women get married?” Santorum was asked.

“Are we saying everyone should have the right to marry?”

“Yes!” shouted the crowd.

So anyone can marry anyone else?” Santorum asked.

“Yes!”

“So anybody can marry several people?”

This elicited some silence, mumbles and a few “no’s.”

“So if you’re not happy unless you’re married to five other people, is that OK?” Calling the crowd back to order, Santorum continued, “If your point is, people should be allowed to do whatever makes them happy, right?”

“As long as they don’t harm other people,” a young woman replied.

“Who determines whether they’re harming people or not?”

“Well, anybody can understand that.”

“Everybody can understand it. … So we’re not going to have courts?” said Santorum.

“This isn’t, it’s morals, like …”

“So there is some objective standard?” asked Santorum.

“It’s morally right for two men to have the same rights as a man and a woman.”

“If it makes three people happy to get married, based on what you just said, what makes that wrong and what you said right?” said Santorum.

“That’s irrelevant. … That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“I know. …”

“I’m talking about the basic right that you give you and another woman.”

“OK. You know, it’s important if we’re going to have a discussion based on rational, reasoned thought, that we employ reason.

“OK? And reason says that if you think it’s OK for two, then you have to differentiate with me as to why it’s not OK for three.”

The young people wanted nothing to do with Socrates.

]]> http://frontpagemag.com/2012/01/18/on-gay-marriage-media-gives-obama-a-pass/feed/ 10 http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/29/norman-lears-left-wing-paranoia-about-the-right/ http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/29/norman-lears-left-wing-paranoia-about-the-right/#comments Thu, 29 Dec 2011 04:03:30 +0000 Larry Elder http://frontpagemag.com/?p=117587

They’re coming for your children! They’re coming for the womenfolk! Then they’re coming after you! Norman Lear, the famous television show producer, offered this hysterically paranoid assessment of the allegedly growing and presumably insidious power of “the right”:

“I want to suggest that we lefties start laying claim to what we see as ‘sacred’ and serve it up proudly to the religious right — to the James Dobson, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Karl Rove … hatemongers, sheathed in sanctity, and to the Koch brothers, the types that fund them and use them so effectively for their own political power-grabbing purposes. Over the past several decades, the power-grabbing right has built a powerful infrastructure — radio and TV stations and networks. They’ve built think tanks, colleges and law schools.”

How accurate is Lear’s assessment of the supposed power and influence of the right? Is the right steadily forming a formidable alliance of academics, media outlets, websites, etc., that serve as a fourth column for the “right wing”? Even if this were true, what about the power of the left?

Let’s look at the mainstream media. In “Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind,” UCLA economist and political science professor Dr. Tim Groseclose uses three different methods to determine the SQ — or slant quotient — of the major media outlets. Of the 20 most prominent news outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, “Good Morning America” and Time magazine, he found only two that leaned to the right: The Washington Times and Fox News.

True, the network evening news shows no longer hold the market share of years past, but nearly 25 million Americans still turn to Diane Sawyer, Brian Williams and Scott Pelley each night. That means eight times as many viewers watch ABC/NBC/CBS as watch “The O’Reilly Factor,” the top-rated cable news/talk program.

When people like Lear speak of the growing power of the right-wing cabal, they believe Fox leads the charge. And Bill O’Reilly is clearly the face of the Fox News network. But as hated as O’Reilly is by the left, how legitimate is their description of O’Reilly as a right-wing ideologue?

O’Reilly is not even a Republican. He is registered as an independent and opposes the death penalty. He supported — at least initially — the Senate’s so-called “amnesty bill.” His opposition to ObamaCare is based on cost rather than the Constitution. He believes that in “a system where everybody is guaranteed the same health care … whether you have a lot of money or no money, you’re gonna get the same health care.

]]> http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/29/norman-lears-left-wing-paranoia-about-the-right/feed/ 11 http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/21/the-black-occupy-protester-missing-in-action/ http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/21/the-black-occupy-protester-missing-in-action/#comments Wed, 21 Dec 2011 04:14:33 +0000 Larry Elder http://frontpagemag.com/?p=116817

As “Person of the Year,” Time magazine named “The Protester.” The subhead read, “From the Arab Spring to Athens, From Occupy Wall Street to Moscow.”

Well, yes, but what about the lack of American black protesters? Good Lord, where is the racial diversity/inclusion/proportional representation?

Back in the day, the tea party’s alleged lack of black participants was beyond worrisome to the media. The lack of black faces in the crowd allowed the major media to describe the tea party as racially exclusionary, if not … racist!

“Some of them in Congress right now with this tea party movement,” said Rep. Andre Carson, D-Ind., “would love to see you and me … hanging on a tree.” Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif. said tea partiers can “go straight to hell.” A New York Times op-ed described tea partiers as “overwhelmingly white, but even compared to other white Republicans, they had a low regard for immigrants and blacks long before Barack Obama was president, and they still do.”

So the formula is set: Lack of blacks plus “overwhelmingly white” equals racism. Right? Not so fast.

This formula does not apply to the Occupy Wall Street movement, which is as white as an Idaho picket fence. A Washington Post opinion piece cites a survey that found “African Americans, who are 12.6 percent of the U.S. population, make up only 1.6 percent of Occupy Wall Street.” And blacks are 25 percent of New York City’s population. Occupy Wall Street was a home game for them. By contrast, 6 percent of tea party supporters, according to an April 2010 Gallup poll, are black. That’s almost four times the number of blacks who make up Occupy Wall Street.

Why so few blacks in the Occupy movement?

A Washington Post opinion piece offered one reason — black resignation: “Perhaps black America’s absence is sending a message to the Occupiers: ‘We told you so! Nothing will change. We’ve been here already. It’s hopeless.’”

But blacks view the economy differently — and a lot more optimistically — than do whites.

Despite around 16 percent unemployment, as compared to the 8.6 percent national rate, and nearly 50 percent black teenage unemployment, blacks feel better about the economy than do whites. A February 2011 Washington Post survey found that 24 percent of blacks were “very” or “somewhat satisfied” with the economy, compared to 12 percent of whites.

A recent NBC poll found that by a lopsided 73 percent to 19 percent, most Americans considered the country on the “wrong track.” But not blacks. Forty-nine percent of blacks think the country is “headed in the right direction” versus 38 percent who do not.

]]> http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/21/the-black-occupy-protester-missing-in-action/feed/ 9 http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/15/obama-the-out-of-touch-elitist/ http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/15/obama-the-out-of-touch-elitist/#comments Thu, 15 Dec 2011 04:05:15 +0000 Larry Elder http://frontpagemag.com/?p=116112

The next best thing to calling a Republican “racist,” “sexist,” “homophobic,” or “Uncle Tom” (where appropriate) is to call him “out of touch.”

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is the latest wealthy Republican to be called “out of touch.” The proof? Why, he offered to bet rival Texas Gov. Rick Perry. The amount offered was — gasp — $10,000! This, of course, makes him another born-on-third-base-and-thought-he-hit-a-triple Republican. The Democratic National Committee pounced and immediately put out a video: “Mitt Romney: Simply Out of Touch — Ten Thousand Times Over.”

But which “elite, out-of-touch politician” considers a $172,200 annual salary “relatively modest” — Republican presidential hopeful Romney or President Barack Obama? Answer: Obama.

Whose $300K-per-year hospital-executive wife traveled to working-class Zanesville, Ohio, and complained about the high cost of her daughters’ summer camp, piano and dance lessons? Answer: Obama’s.

The then-U.S. senator was making $170K. The 2005-2009 median income in Zanesville: $28,854, almost $13,000 less than the national median.

Romney fits this role perfectly. Son of a former American Motors CEO and Michigan governor, Romney made a bundle buying and selling businesses. Pretty blond wife. Pretty kids. Every hair in place. What’s not to hate?

Never mind that there are more multimillionaire Democrat senators than multimillionaire Republican senators. Never mind that the average contribution to the DNC is larger than the average contribution to the RNC.

If not enough anecdotes exist to paint a Republican as a condescending patrician, why, just make something up. The New York Times wrote a phony story to slap the “elitist” label on former President George Herbert Walker Bush. At a grocers convention, Bush was intrigued by a device that could read torn bar code labels. Only one pool reporter was present, from a Texas paper, and he filed an unremarkable two-paragraph report on Bush’s tour at the convention.

The New York Times, however, ran a front-page story headlined, “Bush Encounters the Supermarket, Amazed.” The Times falsely wrote that the allegedly clueless out-of-touch Bush was surprised by an ordinary checkout scanner.

Reacting to the Bush-didn’t-know-a-scanner assertion, a systems analyst for the National Grocers Association who showed Bush the scanner said: “The whole thing is ludicrous. What he was amazed about was the ability of the scanner to take that torn label and reassemble it.” Nevertheless, Bush’s image as a rich, out-of-touch patrician hurt.

Obama, on the other hand, is a “man of the people.”

But Obama has long enjoyed a very un-Joe Sixpack-like life.

]]> http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/15/obama-the-out-of-touch-elitist/feed/ 0 http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/01/bulletproof-barney-frank-retires/ http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/01/bulletproof-barney-frank-retires/#comments Thu, 01 Dec 2011 04:09:06 +0000 Larry Elder http://frontpagemag.com/?p=114263

When Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., announced his intention not to seek re-election after a 32-year career, not one of the nightly news broadcast network anchors found time or space to mention either Frank’s central role in the housing meltdown or his congressional reprimand. Not one. Similarly, an Associated Press article headlined, “Democratic Rep. Barney Frank Announces Retirement,” mentioned the reprimand, but nada on Frank and the housing collapse.

ABC called him “one of the most familiar, powerful and colorful characters on Capitol Hill.” NBC said, “Among his legacies — besides his legendary sharp tongue — he was the first member of Congress to publicly acknowledge he was gay, back in 1987.” In a nearly 30-paragraph press release — uh, news article — headlined, “Barney Frank, a Top Liberal, Won’t Seek Re-election,” The New York Times sanitized, purged and whitewashed.

The “all the news that’s fit to print” newspaper, America’s most influential, left out a few things.

Frank relentlessly defended Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the “government sponsored entities” at the center of the housing meltdown. National Review editorialized: “It is as a champion of a different kind of pay-for-play operation, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, that the congressman did the most damage to the country.” Economist Thomas Sowell wrote last year, “No one contributed more to the policies behind the housing boom and bust, which led to the economic disaster we are now in, than Congressman Barney Frank.”

Sowell explains: “His powerful position on the House of Representatives’ Committee on Financial Services gave him leverage to force through legislation and policies which pressured banks and other lenders to grant mortgage loans to people who would not qualify under the standards which had long prevailed. … With the federal regulators leaning on banks to make more loans to people who did not meet traditional qualifications — the ‘underserved population’ in political Newspeak — and quotas being given to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy more of these riskier mortgages from the original lenders, critics pointed out the dangers in these pressures to meet arbitrary home ownership goals. But Barney Frank counter-attacked these critics.”

Whom did Frank blame when the housing meltdown — and Freddie and Fannie’s role in it — became obvious even to Frank? “Right-wing Republicans,” he said.

The Big Three nightly news anchors and the Times also managed to avoid any mention of Frank’s congressional reprimand for fixing the parking tickets of a male prostitute.

“Representative Frank,” writes National Review, “was reprimanded by the House for making misleading statements to a Virginia prosecutor on behalf of the prostitute — whom the congressman eventually put on his own payroll — and for having fixed dozens of parking tickets on this behalf.” Frank denied knowing that his lover, a convicted drug dealer, was running a prostitution business out of the congressman’s house.

The boyfriend, however, insisted that Frank knew about it.

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