Wednesday, August 31, 2016

OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS: CRONIES AND THE RICH GET RICHER, ILLEGALS GET MILLIONS OF OUR JOBS AND BILLIONS IN WELFARE and the AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS PAYS FOR THEIR ECONOMIC CRIMES - Obama success story: Third biggest stock market boom since 1900

Obama success story: Third biggest stock market boom since 1900

This gave rise to a massive boom in 

speculation that has greatly exacerbated the 

growth of social inequality. The wealth of the 

400 richest individuals in the US skyrocketed 

from $1.27 trillion in 2009 to $2.34 trillion 

last year.

Obama success story: Third biggest stock market boom since 1900

By E.P. Bannon 
31 August 2016
A recent commentary published in the New York Times celebrates the boom in share prices under President Barack Obama. The article appeared in the Sunday, August 21 print edition of the Times under the headline, “The Great Obama Bull Market,” but was initially published online under a headline even more explicit about the beneficiaries of Obama’s policies: “The Obama Years: The Best of Times to Be a Stock Investor.”
The author, Jeff Sommer, begins by describing the stock market under Obama in glowing terms. He writes: “The facts are inescapable: The Obama years have been among the best of times to be a stock investor, going all the way back to the dawn of the 20th century.” He notes that someone who bought a low-cost stock index fund at the beginning of Obama’s presidency would have seen the value of the investment triple as of today.
Obama has overseen the third best run for stock market investors since 1900, Sommer writes. The market performed better only under the presidencies of Republican Calvin Coolidge in the 1920s, during the speculative boom that led to the Great Depression, and Democrat Bill Clinton, who presided over the era of “irrational exuberance” on financial markets and the tech bubble. Under Obama, the stock market performed better than under pro-business Republican presidents such as Ronald Reagan, Dwight Eisenhower and George H.W. Bush.
The current bull market is the outcome of deliberate policies undertaken by Obama in the wake of the 2008 financial crash to save the banks at the expense of the vast majority of the population, beginning with the bailout of major financial institutions.
Obama’s appointment of Timothy Geithner as treasury secretary was an unambiguous signal to Wall Street that its interests would be protected. Geithner, as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, had played a key role in the inflation of the subprime mortgage bubble that burst in 2007 and 2008, leading to the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the September 2008 financial meltdown. As head of the New York Fed, he was one of the main architects, along with Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chair Bernanke, of the TARP program and the subsequent infusions of public funds into the banking and financial system.
At the same time, Obama opposed any meaningful 

government-imposed limits on the salaries and bonuses of 

executives at the banks and corporations that received 

billions of dollars in federal handouts and guarantees 

through the Troubled Asset Relief Fund (TARP) and other 

programs.
The US Federal Reserve lowered its benchmark interest rate to near zero and adopted the policy of “quantitative easing” to pump trillions of dollars into the financial markets. Obama’s reappointment of Ben Bernanke in 2009 and his appointment of Janet Yellen as Bernanke’s successor in 2013 were decisions to support the continuation of this policy.
This gave rise to a massive boom in 

speculation that has greatly exacerbated the 

growth of social inequality. The wealth of the 

400 richest individuals in the US skyrocketed 

from $1.27 trillion in 2009 to $2.34 trillion 

last year.
Share prices have soared to record heights, but have virtually no correlation with the stagnating real economy outside the world of finance. Economic growth for the remainder of 2016 and next year is estimated to be at 2 percent, far lower than after previous recessions. Meanwhile, median household income has fallen by 7 percent since 2000 and labor’s share of total income has dropped from 66 percent to 61 percent.
These days, Obama rarely gloats (at least in public) over the success of the stock market due to the obvious hostility of the majority of the population to Wall Street. But key decisions he took were critical to the explosive rise in stock prices over the past 7 years.
In March of 2009, the Obama administration carried out a number of measures to steady the nerves of America’s financial aristocracy and restore confidence on Wall Street. After the House of Representatives passed a bill to tax some bonuses at a handful of companies that had received government bailout money, following an explosion of public anger over the announcement of $165 million in executive bonuses by the bailed-out insurance giant American International Group (AIG), Obama moved to block passage of a similar bill by the Senate.
That same month, the administration announced a “private-public partnership” to offload the banks’ bad mortgage assets at public expense. Merely days later, Obama announced plans to “fundamentally restructure” the US auto industry while forcing brutal wage and benefit concessions on auto workers as a condition for any further loans to General Motors and Chrysler. The restructuring of the auto industry signaled a broader assault on the working class as a whole.
It was after the implementation of these policies that the stock market began its record-breaking ascent.

OBAMA'S CRONY BIG PHARMA LOOTING AMERICA LIKE OBAMA'S CRONY BANKSTERS! - EpiPen price gouging: Capitalism and the US health care crisis


OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS:


Obamacare, a plan devised by and for the insurance industry,

places no serious limits or requirements on the corporations. 

They can do as they please, jacking up premiums, co-pays 

and deductibles, or pulling out of the program altogether if 

the profits are not sufficiently high. That is precisely what the

biggest insurers are now doing, with the result that next year 

nearly one-third of counties in the US will have only one 

insurer under Obamacare.



On a daily basis, working people see reports of multimillion-

dollar bonanzas for executives at giant pharmaceutical and 

insurance companies, while tens of millions of people 

struggle to pay for essential prescription drugs and medical 

treatments because of ever-higher deductibles, co-pays and 

premiums.




EpiPen price gouging: Capitalism and the US health care crisis

EpiPen price gouging: Capitalism and the US health care crisis

31 August 2016
Mylan Pharmaceutical’s enormous price hikes for EpiPen, an emergency drug for life-threatening allergic reactions, highlight both the outrageous practices of the US pharmaceutical industry and the deplorable state of health care in America.
A two-pack of EpiPen Auto-Injectors, which cost about $100 

in 2004, adjusted for inflation, now costs over $600, putting 

the life-saving device out of reach for many adults and 

children. The device quickly delivers a controlled dosage of 

epinephrine to treat anaphylaxis, a potentially deadly allergic 

reaction to medication, food or insect bites.
Mylan’s price gouging has become a focal point of anger over the complete subordination of health care to huge corporations that are driven by an insatiable quest for profit. On a daily basis, 

working people see reports of multimillion-dollar bonanzas 

for executives at giant pharmaceutical and insurance 

companies, while tens of millions of people struggle to pay 

for essential prescription drugs and medical treatments because of ever-higher deductibles, co-pays and premiums.
Mylan’s price gouging is a particularly disgusting example of profiteering in the health care industry. A 2011 survey found that 8 percent of US children had a food allergy and nearly 40 percent of these individuals had a history of severe reactions. With the six-fold increase in price, families are gambling on not purchasing EpiPens or paying for the auto-injectors by going deeper into debt and forgoing other necessities.
Mylan is the second-largest generic and specialty drug company in the world, with about 35,000 employees, more than 1,400 products, and customers in more than 150 countries. Mylan obtained the EpiPen franchise through its 2007 purchase of the generic division of Merck, another pharmaceutical giant.
To generate sales, Mylan has spent tens of millions on EpiPen TV ads. This includes $1.7 million on ads broadcast during the Rio Olympics that show a teenager mistakenly ingesting peanut butter at a party and losing consciousness while her friends frantically call 911.
Forty-seven US states now require public schools to stock the devices. Its use has grown by 67 percent since 2008, and over 3.6 million prescriptions were written for EpiPens last year. Sales of the device have generated annual revenues of $1 billion, accounting for 40 percent of Mylan’s profits.
Mylan CEO Heather Bresch’s total 

compensation went from $2.4 million in 2007

to nearly $19 million in 2015. When 

questioned in an interview about the EpiPen 

price hikes, she said, “Look, we’re going to 

continue to run a business.”
But Bresch and Mylan, contrary to the media presentation, are not aberrations. Drug companies across the board are raising prices for both generic and brand name drugs. Here are some of the biggest recent price hikes:
• Between 2002 and 2013, the cost of insulin for treatment of diabetes rose nearly 200 percent, from $4.34 per milliliter to $12.92.
• Gilead prices a single course of treatment with Sovaldi, a hepatitis C drug, at $84,000, or $1,000 per pill.
• Turing Pharmaceuticals last year acquired US marketing rights for Daraprim, used to treat the parasitic disease toxoplasmosis, and raised the price from $13.50 to $750 a tablet.
A 2015 report found that prescription drugs cost up to 10 times more in the US than they do in other countries. The EpiPen is a case in point. Meda sells a two-pack of EpiPens in France for about $85, while the price for the antidote syringes in Canada is about $100.
An article in Tuesday’s New York Times pointed indirectly to the involvement of a whole network of corporate players in the profiteering that rests upon the inflation of prescription drug prices. It quotes the head of a consulting firm for the drug distribution industry as saying that “if Mylan had simply lowered the price, it would have risked angering all the parties in the distribution network, including pharmacy benefit managers, wholesalers and pharmacies, which take a piece of the total amount spent on the drug.”
Commenting on Mylan’s decision, in the face of a sharp fall in its stock price last week, to offer a generic version of EpiPen at a price of $300, half that of the brand-name version, the drug industry expert said that introducing a generic was “a way to do it without making enemies with a bunch of Fortune 25 companies who control your fate.”
In other words, health care provision in capitalist America is a racket in which the spoils are divided among a number of corporate players, at the expense of the health and lives of the general population.
Another industry analyst noted on Monday that even at the “bargain” price of $300, Mylan’s overall revenue per prescription would be about $280.
The Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s signature domestic program, is not aimed at shaking up this state of affairs, but at entrenching and deepening it. The legislation’s central provision, the “individual mandate,” compels individuals and families without insurance to purchase policies from private insurers under threat of a stiff tax penalty.
In the fourth year of Obamacare, it is a scandal in itself that some 27 million people in the US remain uninsured, as many people are too poor to buy coverage, even with the plan’s modest government subsidies. Most of the least expensive ACA plans come with deductibles in excess of $5,000 and other outrageous out-of-pocket costs that render the plans virtually useless in covering medical costs, forcing people to self-ration their medical care.
Obamacare, a plan devised by and for the insurance 

industry, places no serious limits or requirements on the corporations. They can do as they please, jacking up premiums, co-pays and deductibles, or pulling out of the program altogether if the profits are not sufficiently high. That is precisely what the biggest insurers are now doing, with the result that next year nearly one-third of counties in the US will have only one insurer under Obamacare.
From the insurance leviathans, to the pharmaceutical firms, to the giant hospital chains, to the drug store chains—the entire health care system in America is dominated by huge corporations in operation for one reason: to make a profit. The needs of people for medical treatments, tests and prescription drugs are entirely secondary.
Quality health care for everyone is a basic social right. But it is incompatible with a system based on the capitalist market.
The Socialist Equality Party calls for an end to medicine-for-profit and the establishment of free, high-quality, state-run health care for all. In opposition to the corporate-controlled health care system, we call for the nationalization of the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical giants and the hospital and drug store chains and their transformation into publicly owned and democratically controlled institutions.
Socialized medicine as part of a socialist economy is the only basis upon which a rational, humane and egalitarian health care system can be developed.
Kate Randall




This gave rise to a massive boom in 

speculation that has greatly exacerbated the 

growth of social inequality. The wealth of the 

400 richest individuals in the US skyrocketed 

from $1.27 trillion in 2009 to $2.34 trillion 

last year.

Obama success story: Third biggest stock market boom since 1900

By E.P. Bannon 
31 August 2016
A recent commentary published in the New York Times celebrates the boom in share prices under President Barack Obama. The article appeared in the Sunday, August 21 print edition of the Times under the headline, “The Great Obama Bull Market,” but was initially published online under a headline even more explicit about the beneficiaries of Obama’s policies: “The Obama Years: The Best of Times to Be a Stock Investor.”
The author, Jeff Sommer, begins by describing the stock market under Obama in glowing terms. He writes: “The facts are inescapable: The Obama years have been among the best of times to be a stock investor, going all the way back to the dawn of the 20th century.” He notes that someone who bought a low-cost stock index fund at the beginning of Obama’s presidency would have seen the value of the investment triple as of today.
Obama has overseen the third best run for stock market investors since 1900, Sommer writes. The market performed better only under the presidencies of Republican Calvin Coolidge in the 1920s, during the speculative boom that led to the Great Depression, and Democrat Bill Clinton, who presided over the era of “irrational exuberance” on financial markets and the tech bubble. Under Obama, the stock market performed better than under pro-business Republican presidents such as Ronald Reagan, Dwight Eisenhower and George H.W. Bush.
The current bull market is the outcome of deliberate policies undertaken by Obama in the wake of the 2008 financial crash to save the banks at the expense of the vast majority of the population, beginning with the bailout of major financial institutions.
Obama’s appointment of Timothy Geithner as treasury secretary was an unambiguous signal to Wall Street that its interests would be protected. Geithner, as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, had played a key role in the inflation of the subprime mortgage bubble that burst in 2007 and 2008, leading to the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the September 2008 financial meltdown. As head of the New York Fed, he was one of the main architects, along with Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chair Bernanke, of the TARP program and the subsequent infusions of public funds into the banking and financial system.
At the same time, Obama opposed any meaningful 

government-imposed limits on the salaries and bonuses of 

executives at the banks and corporations that received 

billions of dollars in federal handouts and guarantees 

through the Troubled Asset Relief Fund (TARP) and other 

programs.
The US Federal Reserve lowered its benchmark interest rate to near zero and adopted the policy of “quantitative easing” to pump trillions of dollars into the financial markets. Obama’s reappointment of Ben Bernanke in 2009 and his appointment of Janet Yellen as Bernanke’s successor in 2013 were decisions to support the continuation of this policy.
This gave rise to a massive boom in 

speculation that has greatly exacerbated the 

growth of social inequality. The wealth of the 

400 richest individuals in the US skyrocketed 

from $1.27 trillion in 2009 to $2.34 trillion 

last year.
Share prices have soared to record heights, but have virtually no correlation with the stagnating real economy outside the world of finance. Economic growth for the remainder of 2016 and next year is estimated to be at 2 percent, far lower than after previous recessions. Meanwhile, median household income has fallen by 7 percent since 2000 and labor’s share of total income has dropped from 66 percent to 61 percent.
These days, Obama rarely gloats (at least in public) over the success of the stock market due to the obvious hostility of the majority of the population to Wall Street. But key decisions he took were critical to the explosive rise in stock prices over the past 7 years.
In March of 2009, the Obama administration carried out a number of measures to steady the nerves of America’s financial aristocracy and restore confidence on Wall Street. After the House of Representatives passed a bill to tax some bonuses at a handful of companies that had received government bailout money, following an explosion of public anger over the announcement of $165 million in executive bonuses by the bailed-out insurance giant American International Group (AIG), Obama moved to block passage of a similar bill by the Senate.
That same month, the administration announced a “private-public partnership” to offload the banks’ bad mortgage assets at public expense. Merely days later, Obama announced plans to “fundamentally restructure” the US auto industry while forcing brutal wage and benefit concessions on auto workers as a condition for any further loans to General Motors and Chrysler. The restructuring of the auto industry signaled a broader assault on the working class as a whole.
It was after the implementation of these policies that the stock market began its record-breaking ascent.
OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS: You were wondering how many jobs went to illegals and how well Obama’s crony banksters have done???

The sputtering economic recovering under President Obama, the last to follow a major recession, has fallen way short of the average recovery and ranks as the worst since the 1930s Great Depression, according to a new report.

Had the recovery under Obama been the average of the 11 since the Depression, according to the report, family incomes would be $17,000 higher, six million fewer Americans would be in poverty, and there would be six million more jobs.
THE OBAMA-CLINTON ECONOMIC MELTDOWN -----  HOME OWNERSHIP – ECONOMIC MELTDOWN
THE OBAMA DOCTRINE: ABET CRONY BANKSTERS SO THEY CAN FINSISH OFF THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS. KEEP BORDERS WIDE OPEN TO EASE MILLIONS OF MEX FLAG WAVERS INTO OUR JOBS, WELFARE OFFICES AND VOTING BOOTHS, AND EXPAND THE MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS’ MARKETS IN AMERICA’S OPEN BORDERS TO KILL OFF AMERICA’S WHITE POPULATION TO BUILD A MUSLIM-STYLE DICTATORSHIP FOR ONE BARACK OBAMA, THE “Hope & Change” HUCKSTER FROM CHICAGO.
"The decline in homeownership is one sign of the deep social crisis in the United States. As rents and housing costs have soared, spurred on by financial speculation that has enriched the ruling elites, incomes and jobs for most Americans have shriveled."
OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS TO SERVE THE SUPER RICH: The slow and painful death of America
"These figures present a scathing indictment of the social order that prevails in America, the world’s wealthiest country, whose government proclaims itself to be the globe’s leading democracy. They are just one manifestation of the human toll taken by the vast and all-pervasive inequality and mass poverty that dominates American society."
http://hillaryclinton-whitecollarcriminal.blogspot.com/2016/08/hillary-clintons-america-obama-poverty.html
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/08/serving-super-rich-obama-clintonomics.html

THE OBAMA SOLUTION TO WHITE CHRISTIAN AMERICA: DRUG ADDICTION!!!


MEXICO: AMERICA’S DRUG DEALER!
The same period has seen a massive growth of social inequality, with income and wealth concentrated at the very top of American society to an extent not seen since the 1920s.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/08/obama-clintonomics-their-crony.html

“This study follows reports released over the past several months documenting rising mortality rates among US workers due to drug addiction and suicide, high rates of infant mortality, an overall leveling off of life expectancy, and a growing gap between the life expectancy of the bottom rung of income earners compared to those at the top.”
THE MEXICAN DRUS CARTELS HAVE GREATLY BENEFITED FROM BARACK OBAMA’S SABOTAGE OF HOMELAND SECURITY.

THE CLINTON “JOBS” PLAN ENDORSED BY NARCOMEX – IT’S CALLED AMNESTY!

Clinton, in the guise of a “jobs” and “infrastructure” program, promoted yet another scheme to hand out tax cuts and other incentives for companies to hire workers at poverty-level wages, with the trade unions brought in to keep the workers in line in return for a cut in the spoils.

THE GLOBAL REACH OF HILLARY AND BILLARY  AND THEIR BRIBES SUCKING

America’s Looming Economic Armageddon – Can the Rich Get Even Richer During the Meltdown? Haven’t they looted us into bankruptcy?

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

DO BLACK LIVES MATTER TO THESE THUGS? - BLACK GANGS IN CALIFORNIA INVADE AND LOOT 5,000 HOMES

According to ABC 7, the gang members involved in the 


burglary ring allegedly “[struck] homes four to five times in a


week” and “are suspected of some 5,000 burglaries” in total. 


http://abc7.com/news/gang-related-burglary-ring-hit-5000-socal-homes-police-say/1487046/








Torrance police arrested 13 reputed South Los Angeles gang members today in a massive pre-dawn operation to break up an organized ring believed responsible for some 5,000 residential burglaries in five Southern California counties.  Photo Courtesy Torrance Police Department
Torrance police arrested 13 reputed South Los Angeles gang members today in a massive pre-dawn operation to break up an organized ring believed responsible for some 5,000 residential burglaries in five Southern California counties. Photo Courtesy Torrance Police Department 
An army of law enforcement officers led by Torrance police arrested 13 reputed South Los Angeles gang members Friday in a massive pre-dawn operation to break up an organized ring believed responsible for some 5,000 residential burglaries in five Southern California counties.
The operation, dubbed “Operation Money Bags,” culminated nearly four years of investigation to not just arrest and prosecute suspected burglars but to tie their crimes to their gangs, using gang-related sentencing laws that could add years to their prison terms, Torrance police Sgt. Paul Kranke said.
“We were looking for ways to solve our residential burglary problem,” Kranke said. “This is our long-term plan we came up with.”
More than 400 officers from 18 police agencies joined the Torrance police force to raid 28 locations, primarily in South Los Angeles. The locations targeted members of the East Coast Crips gang, tying them to residential burglaries committed in Torrance and other South Bay cities as well as communities across Los Angeles, Ventura, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
Search warrants were served without any problems, Kranke said. Two other suspects were arrested earlier in the week.
“We have 13 arrests today,” Kranke said. “We recovered seven firearms and various amounts of narcotics and U.S. currency.”
The raids were carried out with no problems or use of force, Kranke said.
Others suspects were arrested as the investigation proceeded over the years, including some on other charges, police said. A few suspects are still being sought.
Investigators said the operation was part of what they hope is a long-term solution to a sharp increase in residential burglaries that police officers say began when prison overcrowding relief efforts resulted in shorter sentences for offenders committing nonviolent crimes. The so-called “realignment” has allowed burglars to return to the streets to commit more offenses, said undercover police officers involved in Friday morning’s operation.
“They are going to be sentenced and assigned to state prison as opposed to being in a revolving door,” one of the officers said.
Additional crimes attributed to the East Coast Crips occurred in Alameda County in the Bay Area, along with locations in Washington and Colorado, police said. Some crimes were committed simply because gang members had traveled to those locations, police said.
The gang members also are believed to be partly to blame for a recent high-profile increase in residential burglaries on the Palos Verdes Peninsula causing angst among residents and demands for a crackdown, investigators said.
In addition to the raids Friday, state corrections officers performed searches in the cells of 50 inmates in prisons across the state. The inmates are suspected of helping to direct the burglaries using illegally held cellphones behind bars or benefiting financially from cash proceeds delivered to them from the crimes, police said.
When Torrance police began noticing the increase in burglaries in 2012, patrol officers studied the numbers and locations, and adjusted shifts to try to tackle the problem. Following some arrests, Torrance police administrators assigned the department’s gang unit to join its burglary investigations team when they found that many of the thieves they were arresting were East Coast Crips gang members. East Coast Crips is a primarily black gang made up of various factions located in neighborhoods east of the 110 Freeway in South Los Angeles.
According to investigators, gang leaders had figured out that developing an organized burglary plan could be extremely lucrative. Each day, burglars had a goal of finding $5,000 and a gun, sometimes heading out to commit crimes four or five times a week. Each gang member targeted Friday was suspected of involvement in 125 to 150 crimes.
Police have tied more than 50 gang members to the crimes.
Gang leaders planned the burglaries in meticulous fashion, picking out neighborhoods to target, dressing professionally and using high-end rental cars in an attempt to not draw attention to themselves. “White pages” apps on their phones were used to call phone numbers along streets to see if anyone was home.
Asians were targeted by the burglary crews. Gang members would check for Asian names on targeted streets and look for shoes left on porches, a sign that an Asian family might live there. Gang members, police said, believed Asians kept money in their homes and “had the best gold.”
Following many crimes, police said, gang members kept their profit and stolen property for themselves to live a luxurious lifestyle. Others fenced stolen goods. Stolen guns ended up on the street and were used in other crimes, police said.
But gang members didn’t stop there. Those involved in the burglaries began flaunting their riches on social media, posting photographs of themselves holding thousands of dollars in cash on Facebook, Instagram and other sites. Sometimes they even recorded themselves committing crimes and put it online to boast, police said.
Detectives paid attention. The posts became tools for gang members to promote their gangs and recruit new members, and detectives and prosecutors decided to use their boastful posts against them, investigators said.
Gang detectives began scouring websites with a new idea. Instead of prosecuting a gang member for a burglary or two, crimes that might get them limited time behind bars, detectives worked to connect burglars to the ring, using their social media boasts to show their crimes were specifically benefiting their gang. So-called “gang enhancement” charges often are tied to murder cases, where prosecutors allege murders were committed for the gang’s benefit.
The District Attorney’s Office signed on to add the gang enhancement to burglary cases.
“Hopefully, it will reduce burglaries,” Kranke said.

Gang Members Told to Steal $5000 and a Gun Per Day

4

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Southern California gang members were given orders to break into homes daily and return to their leaders with “at least $5,000 and a weapon every single day,” according to law enforcement.

The daily burglary quota was discovered after officials made 
15 arrests in “a gang-related burglary ring that they say hit 
thousands of SoCal homes.” The homes were in “upscale 
neighborhoods in Los Angeles, Ventura, Orange, Riverside 
and San Bernardino Counties.”
According to ABC 7, the gang members involved in the burglary ring allegedly “[struck] homes four to five times in a week” and “are suspected of some 5,000 burglaries” in total. It took eighteen different police departments and “400” individual law enforcement personnel “three and half years…to track the burglary suspects back to the ringleaders.”
Many of the suspects have been in and out of jail multiple times. “Law enforcement officials blame the short sentences on a new state law designed to reduce prison overcrowding” but believe longer sentences will result from the latest arrests because of the compounding nature of gang-related charges.
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.


Black Violence: Ignoring the Elephant in the Room

The most dangerous places in America are the places where liberals reign supreme – large U.S. cities.  The city of Chicago is infamously a significant part of this violence.  Tellingly, 80 percent of the shootings in Chicago are classified as gang-related.  And what is one of the most common traits among American gang members?  Broken families – especially those involving fatherless homes.

Yet, in a foolish tweet that followed the tragic death of Nykea Aldridge (Dwyane Wade's cousin) in Chicago – another victim of senseless gang violence – where Donald Trump brazenly (and in all likelihood wrongly) declared that "African-Americans will VOTE TRUMP," Trump failed to make note of the breakdown of the family.
If one is going to politicize a violent death (something Obama and his minions have done often, including this incident), one should do so in an intelligent manner.
If Mr. Trump wants to endear himself to black Americans who have long suffered under the policies of Democrats, he should regularly and loudly point out how complicit is the party of liberalism in the destruction of the black family and how this destruction has led to the violence killing literally thousands of black Americans annually.
Likewise, after the death of his cousin, Dwyane Wade decided to have a "conversation" about the violence that plagues Chicago and other urban areas in America.  Several of Wade's cohorts from the elite world of professional athletics participated in the discussion, and ESPN hosted.  There were many mentions of "gun violence" but not one mention of the breakdown of the family.  There was also the mention of "mentoring."  I wonder how many of the athletes featured in this discussion actually "mentor" their own children – you know, by having faithful marriages to the mothers of their children.

And how many of these athletes are practicing what they preach by not fathering children out of wedlock?  Surely such "men of conversation" are aware that children born out of wedlock are much more likely to embark on a life of thuggery and violence.  Until the real problems that result in gangs and violence are addressed, these "conversations" are an embarrassing waste of time.

Speaking of athletes who waste their time, any athlete who expends any amount of time and energy perpetuating the lie that is the narrative of the Black Lives Matter movement may as well lose himself on the interstate while driving to his stadium.  Yes, Colin Kaepernick, that means you.  If Mr. Kaepernick wants to sit in protest – even against the nation that has afforded him so much –  fine, but at least find a worthy cause.

After being questioned about his decision to sit while the national anthem was being played prior to the start of the most recent San Francisco 49ers pre-season football game, Kaepernick stated, "I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder."

I think it's fair to conclude that Mr. Kaepernick has completely swallowed the lies of Black Lives Matter.  As has been frequently documented recently, the vast majority of the "bodies in the street" to which Mr. Kaepernick refers are the result of young black American males killing other young black American males.  And again we come back to the breakdown of the family.

When are these athletes going to stand up for marriage and the family?  Where's the chorus of those who will join with the likes of the NFL's Ben Watson and speak eternal truth to a nation desperate for it?  And if one wants to protest a flag, why not protest the rainbow flag of the homosexual agenda?  (Do you think those in the media, or the NFL, who support Kaepernick's right to protest the U.S. national anthem would be so accommodating if he stood against the homosexual agenda?)  Where were the player protests when the NFL threatened the state of Georgia (a threat to which the governor of Georgia cowardly succumbed) when a tame religious liberty bill was being considered?  Woe to those who stand up (or sit down) for lies but are silent when the truth is under assault!
Furthermore, the United States of America has been one of the greatest instruments for good the world has ever known – a fact about which Mr. Kaepernick demonstrates stunning ignorance.

With our military might, we have been an unequaled force for freedom and liberty around the world.  We have liberated millions and defended millions more.  For every human being enslaved in America, hundreds of millions more have been freed due to the brave and selfless efforts of Americans.

America is the most generous nation the world has ever known.  Americans account for nearly half of all the charitable giving in the world.  The vast majority of these contributions are private, not government, funds.  Whether wars or hurricanes, floods or famines, earthquakes or tsunamis, with our abundant human, natural, and technological resources, time and again, Americans have come to the aid of their neighbors around the world.
In addition, according to Mark Tooley, "America accepts more immigrants, about a million legally every year, than any other nation and, by some measures, than all other nations combined.  America permanently resettles more refugees than any other nation."  Most importantly, the U.S. sends out more Christian missionaries than any other nation, nearly tripling the second-place nation, Brazil.

In other words, Mr. Kaepernick, the United States of America, the nation in which you (and countless others like you) became rich and famous, has given you little reason to protest – much less reason than any other nation in the history of the world.

Trevor Grant Thomas: At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com


Trevor is the author of the brand new book The Miracle and Magnificence of America.
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com



Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/09/black_violence_ignoring_the_elephant_in_the_room.html#ixzz4JsR2zOwX
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