
So with Obama decrying racism again as a cause of the problem and putting much of that on the police, he added the charge that the Republicans are at fault by not authorizing more funding for cities like Baltimore.
Let's look at a couple of Obama's claims and see where that puts him on the accuracy chain. We'll include his charge of racism and overreach by the police, that Republicans wouldn't appropriate sufficient funds to get things working in Baltimore again and we'll also take a look about his argument that Democrats create jobs.
The City of Baltimore has a Democratic administration and there has not been a Republican mayor since 1967; there have only been two Republican mayors of this Democratic bastion since 1920. The city council is all Democrats and yet the city has been going downhill despite the downtown renovation that made the Inner Harbor a favorite place. And most of the problem which has taken tourists away has been crime.
If you will remember, the Great Society began in 1964 under Lyndon Johnson. Large urban areas were recipients of vast amounts of money in programs designed to end hunger, reduce the number of poor and offer employment opportunities for the disadvantaged. In 1960, just prior to this major legislative venture, ten percent of the population was classified as poor. Today it is twenty-five percent under both a Democratic President and a Democratic city government. Yet taxes are high and there is no incentive for anyone to start a business, which is the most likely way to get work today. Accordingly, overall unemployment is about thirty-five percent higher than the national average and, remember, those numbers don't include those who have given up looking for work.
If you look back to the Great Society and the cumulative cost of those supposedly worthy programs, we have spent since then over twenty-two trillion dollars on these programs with dismal outcomes. The aforementioned unemployment of minorities is one and huge increases in food stamps as well as working age adults being dropped from unemployment statistics are two more. You see, when a worker become disenchanted after running out of unemployment assistance and with no long term prospects of work, many just opt out of the system. Unfortunately, there are no accurate figures correlating the crime increases in urban areas with this categorization, but crime is up dramatically in Baltimore.
So for Barack Obama to try and blame Republicans for not giving him more money when he has outspent the entire previous Presidential lineup with no positive result is laughable. And frankly, until people of Baltimore realize that they themselves must change the way they look at things and develop a can do attitude, the likelihood for them to find good paying work with dignity is likely to allude them.
No, America, Republicans aren't the problem, the change in outlook from self-reliance to government dependence is the biggest problem. And it is not just in Baltimore but found all over the country. And with the addition of paid agitators and Marxist and anarchist groups coming to town to feed the flames of discontent, lost souls easily succumb to anger and violence. And that, in turn, feeds the cycle of more businesses leaving the area with none to replace them.
People need to realize that they are the principal factor in their own success. A good attitude, willingness to work hard and putting your best foot forward is always the best way to maximize opportunities. Using your frustration as an excuse for violence and destruction will certainly not do that. A strong support system within the black community, not from rabble rousers like Sharpton and Jackson, but hands on city leaders and local religious leaders finding creative new solutions, not the same old, same old, is what must be done.
If the City of Baltimore inner city community and its civic and religious leaders work to show the rest of America that they are looking for free and productive enterprise and they have peaceful, eager people looking for a hand up, not a hand out, a solution can be found. Americans love to help an underdog; they just want to know that it is worthwhile.
Let's all pray that Baltimore looks for new answers to old problems with the help of God. That will go a long way to turning things around.