ONE THING GOVERNMENT HAS NOT FAILED IN IS FLOODING AMERICAN WITH 'CHEAP' LABOR TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED.
WE WOULDN'T NEED POVERTY PROGRAMS IF PEOPLE COULD GET LIVING WAGES FOR THEIR WORK. THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN SO LONG AS WE HAVE A TWO PARTY SYSTEM TO SERVE WALL STREET.
This is further established by the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic. While workers and children are forced into unsafe environments, endless sums of money are made available to the ultrawealthy to continue their bonanza of financial speculation on Wall Street. Meanwhile, poverty, hunger, homelessness and death have become commonplace among the working class.
In 1964, when the Great Society programs were passed, the poverty rate was 15%, dropping to 13.9% the next year. By 1969 the rate was 9.7%. Exactly 50 years later, in 2019, the rate was 8.7%. That means that as a result of fighting the War on Poverty for half a century, after spending over $30 trillion, the poverty rate dropped by a rounding error—by literally 1%!
The Government Is Not Your Friend, No Matter What Politicians Tell You
Reagan once said: "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help." He was right, the government’s not your friend and it most certainly isn’t here to help you.
The dirty little secret about government is that its purpose is not really to make the lives of citizens better but, rather, to accumulate power at the expense of citizens. Not sure about that? Ask yourself, how many government agencies have put themselves out of a job because they succeeded? There’re a few that technology left behind, like the Steamboat Inspection Service; others that served their purpose, like the Defense Homes Corporation; while others were merged into other agencies like the General Land Office, subsumed into the Department of Interior. In our history, there have been fewer than 100 federal agencies that have actually been shuttered, and most of those existed in the early 20th century to deal with the Depression or the two world wars.
According to the Federal Register, the federal government has 457 different agencies. That’s 457 agencies covering virtually every aspect of American’s lives, most of which are staffed by unelected bureaucrats, all of whom spend your money and many of whom write regulations that carry the force of law which the government’s police power enforces. This includes everything from the State Department to the Geographic Names Board to the International Broadcasting Board to the ATF.
And that 457 is misleading. While it includes a dozen organizations tied to Defense, there are dozens more agencies that come under it that are not listed in the Federal Register such as the DoD Education Activity or the Office of Naval Research. Wikipedia lists a more realistic, but still lacking, 1,500.
The American government has become a leviathan. It’s everywhere, involved in virtually every aspect of American’s lives, and it’s perpetual, regardless of its record of dismal failure. Two examples:
1) The War on Poverty, AKA the Great Society. The brainchild of LBJ, the Great Society programs were created to address poverty in America. They included things like food stamps, Medicaid, Medicare, Head Start, and others.
In 1964, when the Great Society programs were passed, the poverty rate was 15%, dropping to 13.9% the next year. By 1969 the rate was 9.7%. Exactly 50 years later, in 2019, the rate was 8.7%. That means that as a result of fighting the War on Poverty for half a century, after spending over $30 trillion, the poverty rate dropped by a rounding error—by literally 1%!
Yet somehow the War on Poverty goes on, with more programs, more money, more regulations and, of course, more employees. Indeed, DHHS, which manages many of the programs, has a staff of 80,000 and an annual budget of over $1 trillion.
2) Public education. American public education is really just a jobs and revenue-generating program for unions. William McGurn over at the WSJ looks at the performance of schools in the largest school districts. The level of failure is extraordinary.
For example, in 2019, Atlanta public schools spent $17,112 per student and the result of all of that spending was that only 10% of students were proficient in math and 15% in reading. So, for all that expenditure, fully 90% failed basic math proficiency and 85% reading.
This dynamic has been going on for decades across the country. New York City spends $28,004 per student and 75% of them lack proficiency in math and 81% in reading, while Boston spends $25,653 and has similar marks with 88% failing math and 85% reading.
On average the US spends approximately $14,000 per student in education, (Elem – HS), more than any nation in the world other than Luxemburg. And what do we get for that extraordinary spending? Not much. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2018, American students ranked 15th in the world for reading literacy, 18th in science, and 37th in math! Of all of the things that drive a society to prosperity, particularly in today’s technologically advanced world, education is easily one of the most important and, on that score, government has failed miserably, spectacularly, and perpetually.
If the actual goal was to educate students, government would give that money to parents in the form of vouchers to kickstart a private / charter school revolution. Sure, there’d be failures, but it’s hard to imagine how they could fail more spectacularly than the current systems do. But that’s not the goal....
The government spends $30 trillion over half a century and reduces poverty by 1%. The government spends more on education than virtually every nation on the planet yet 85% of the students in its biggest (and most minority-filled) school districts fail basic reading and math, the building blocks for success in our dynamic society. And we’re supposed to believe government works for us?
American governments spend more money on education and social programs than anything else, more than the GDP of most countries. Yet even as they fail, year after year, decade after decade, the funds keep growing, regardless of their catastrophically abysmal track record.
And that tells you everything you need to know about the nature of governments. Their goal isn’t to solve problems. They’re not here to make life better for citizens. Their goal is not to protect the lives and liberties of citizens. No, government is the Borg. Its raison d'etre is simple: Grow revenue and increase power for itself and unions.
Proof? Despite the fact that the United States has 3,143 counties in 50 states spread out over 3,796,742 square miles, nine of the twenty richest counties are in a circle less than 100 miles across with Washington DC at its center. And what is the industry that drives that wealth? Finance? No. Entertainment? No. Steel or autos or high tech? No. One thing: Government power.
Accumulating power is the fundamental nature of government, and our Founding Fathers understood that which is why they gave us the Bill of Rights and particularly the 9th and 10th Amendments. For the first 150 years of our nation, those guardrails stood relatively firm, but today they are simply gone. Sadly, America has become so detached from our Constitution that 90% of what our government does is unconstitutional.
Image: Minnesota anti-tax rally by Fibonacci Blue. CC BY
Democrats surprised to find that sneaky amnesty measures are going down in flames
If you're going to sneak amnesty for illegal immigrants into a budget bill, it's probably best to do it when tens of thousands of migrants aren't surging on in.
That's the lunacy we are looking at -- Democrats scrambling to deliver amnesty to illegals, through their 2,000-page, $3.5 trillion monster pork spending bill, and failing again and again.
That plan has now been nixed twice as out of order by the Senate parliamentarian recommendation.
A second ruling by the Senate parliamentarian has Democrats grasping at straws over how to include some form of immigration relief in their sweeping reconciliation package, as activists pressure them to do more to change the upper chamber’s rules.
Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough on Wednesday ruled against a Democratic proposal to offer permanent residency to millions of undocumented immigrants, the second time in a week she’s shot down a Democratic proposal that would have provided security for the population.
The decision was a stinging blow to Democrats that left them with few options, though some were moving toward a plan C that would involve granting parole to groups of undocumented immigrants.
Her ruling of course, is based on legal precedent, not border surges going on now. But it's hard to not think there's some kind of connection. Why are the Democrats doing their amnesty plan this way, through a sneaky rider in the $3.5 trillion pork bill, instead of a normal legislative way? Hain't they got the power and majority, which they've bragged about for months? The Hill notes that they are scrambling. All those Democrat voters, all those spanking new welfare clients for bureaucrats to 'service,' it's all for naught, so they're upset.
“It looks really bleak. It looks like it will require many years before it can gel again,” said García.
Boo hoo hoo.
The Democrats can still vote on their amnesty for illegals as a completely separate bill any time they like, which is the legal way to do it. But they really want a quiet little rider slipped on in with the $3.5 trillion porkathon budget bill instead.
“This is still a vehicle that offers possibilities — now I'm talking about reconciliation — to protect people in the immigrant community, and I think millions of people,” [Democrat Rep. Jesús García of Illinois] said.
We all know why the parliamentarian's ruling upsets them, actually -- it's because they know that a normal bill will fail in both the House and Senate. The voters don't want it. They can see how tens of thousands of illegal immigrants pour in every time illegal immigration is rewarded instead of punished. The amnesty, of course, would be the crowning glory.
And that's likely intensified by the activist fanatics, who include illegals themselves with a stunning entitlement mentality, who are now shutting down traffic in San Francisco. On the Golden Gate Bridge, they were holding up Spanish-language signs to demonstrate their inability to assimilate, in order to prevent people from getting to their jobs, and pretty well annoying everyone.
They should be apologizing for breaking U.S. law and acting as constructive citizens if they wish to win any sympathy. Not these guys: They're going for the Antifa strategy, browbeating the public through disruption and blocking vehicles, quite possibly emergency vehicles, in order to get what they want.
That's bound to make their cause less popular with the public as the border surge pictures from Del Rio, Texas, remain within memory. The specter of previously resettled refugees out country-shopping and abusing the asylum system with junk claims was not an attractive one to the public, and any amnesty will worsen it. Homeland Security Secretary Alex Mayorkas is now refusing to send virtually anyone back, so at least 60,000 more are coming up from South America now. In the San Francisco Chronicle's YouTube video, you can hear an angry driver held up at the bridge yelling to the cops, "Get 'em outta here."
That's what Democrats see for themselves, too, as they cling to their plan to slip amnesty by any skeevy means on through.
US police have killed more than 30,000 people since 1980
A new study published in The Lancet found that US law enforcement killed at least 30,800 people from 1980 to 2019.
The study, conducted at the University of Washington School of Medicine’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, also found a sharp increase in police killings over the period covering almost 40 years. During the 1980s the mortality rate associated with police violence was 0.25 per 100,000. By the 2010s the rate jumped up to 0.34 per 100,000, an increase of 38.4 percent.
Moreover, researchers discovered that more than half of fatal encounters with police in the United States went unreported at the same time. The study estimated 55 percent of deaths from police violence were not reported or were misclassified in official government databases between 1980 and 2018. These unreported killings represent more than 17,000 deaths at the hands of US police that were kept from public view over a period covering almost 40 years. However, this troubling statistic is still likely an underestimation of the real impact of police brutality.
The new study provides a clearer picture of the issue of police violence in the United States. However, it does not fully account for the real social toll. What’s missing from this report is the untold number of victims that are brutalized by police but survive the physical and emotional scars bore by the victims and their families and the immeasurable suffering inflicted on families and communities that lose a loved one at the hands of police.
To grasp the extent of underreporting of police-involved killings, researchers compared data from the US National Vital Statistics System (NVSS), a government database that collates all death certificates, to three common open-source databases on fatal police violence: Fatal Encounters, Mapping Police Violence and The Counted. Open-source databases collect information from news reports and public record requests, encompassing a wider range of incidents.
The paper noted a Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study found that police killings accounted for 293,000 global deaths from 1980 to 2019. In 2019, the US accounted for 13.2 percent of the 8,770 global deaths at the hands of police, while only accounting for 4 percent of the world’s population.
“The difference these practices have on loss of life is staggering: No one died from police violence in Norway in 2019, and three people were recorded to have died in England and Wales from police violence between 2018 and 2019,” the researchers wrote.
Researchers discovered the top five states with the highest underreporting rates were Oklahoma, Wyoming, Alabama, Louisiana and Nebraska. The states with the highest mortality rate of police brutality were Oklahoma, Washington D.C., Arizona, Alaska, Nevada and Wyoming. Additionally, the paper found that men are killed by police at significantly higher rates than women, with 30,600 police-involved deaths recorded among men and 1,420 among women between 1980 and 2019, a difference of over 2,000 percent.
The study suggested “several factors” are behind the underreporting, including clerical mistakes wherein a coroner or medical examiner may fail to indicate police involvement in a death certificate’s cause of death section. However, the grim reality is that the cover-up of police murders is a conscious policy of the American ruling class and police state.
The researchers noted the fact that coroners and medical examiners are often embedded within police departments and may feel “substantial conflicts of interest” that disincentivize them from indicating law enforcement involvement in a death. The study cited a 2011 survey of National Association of Medical Examiners members that found 22 percent of respondents reported having been pressured by an elected official or appointee to change the cause or manner of death on a certificate.
The national media and the Democratic Party frame police violence as a purely racial issue. Following the sentencing of former Minneapolis Officer Derek Chauvin, President Joe Biden claimed the murder of George Floyd “ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see the systemic racism” imbedded in American society.
The “race, not class” mythology of police killings has been incessantly promoted by the Democratic Party and its political satellites. Regardless of a victim’s skin color, the epidemic of police violence in America devastates families and impacts entire communities. However, this is not how police brutality is presented in the national media.
Undoubtedly, racism plays a role in many police murders and accounts for the fact that minorities are killed at rates disproportionate to their share of the national population. However, a more thorough analysis shows that the killing of minorities by police is only one aspect of the reign of terror by American police against the working class.
A 2018 analysis of police violence statistics published by the World Socialist Web Site found that when economic and social demographics of the cities and counties where people are killed by police are taken into account, the glaring racial disparities that are the focus of the media and the Democrats largely disappear.
Rather, police violence is concentrated on the poorest and most disadvantaged men and women.
“Police violence is focused overwhelmingly on men lowest on the socio-economic ladder: in rural areas outside the South, predominately white men; in the Southwest, disproportionately Hispanic men; in mid-size and major cities, disproportionately black men. Significantly, in the rural South, where the population is racially mixed, white men and black men are killed by police at nearly identical rates. What unites these victims of police violence is not their race, but their class status (as well as, of course, their gender).”
In 2020, police killed 475 white people, 241 black people and 169 Hispanic people, as well as 126 people of unknown race. Police violence affects all sections of the working class. Presenting police violence as a racial issue only serves to divide the working class and obfuscate the social processes behind police killings. In truth, the epidemic of police violence in America is reflective of a society defined by an immense and ever-growing social inequality.
For decades, conditions for American workers have become more dire as their real wages stagnate and social programs eliminated in favor of the militarist aims of American imperialism. The financial crisis of 2008-09 exacerbated the misery of the working class, as well as police killings. Significantly, the study published in The Lancet recorded a sharp uptick in police killings around this time, further indicating a link between America’s social crisis and police killings.
This is further established by the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic. While workers and children are forced into unsafe environments, endless sums of money are made available to the ultrawealthy to continue their bonanza of financial speculation on Wall Street. Meanwhile, poverty, hunger, homelessness and death have become commonplace among the working class.
The rise in police killings in the United States is the manifestation of the social inequality that pervades American society. Rather than being a “black vs. white” issue, it is the armed representatives of the capitalist state (frequently minorities themselves) carrying out their social function: protecting the property of the wealthy and violently suppressing working-class opposition to the capitalist system. Ending police violence requires the abolition of the capitalist system, which police ruthlessly defend with a bloody fist.
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