The Horrors And Destruction That Donald Trump Has Imposed On America...Just Kidding! Part 21

Before we start today’s discussion, let’s review my voting history: 

• I have never voted for a Republican for President in my life. 
• Thus, I did not vote for Trump. 
• I have rarely voted for a Republican for national office in my life. 

A little over two years ago, many liberals, Democrats, and millennials were besides themselves with grief and fear because their pre-ordained queen, Hillary Clinton, was not elected President. Instead, Donald Trump was elected, an individual that these same people despised, hated, and feared, an individual they felt would endanger and possibly destroy the country and our democracy. For the past year and a half they fretted, worried and lashed out at anything or anyone that even remotely smelled of Donald Trump.

Given that Trump has been in office for a little over two years, I thought, that as someone who did not vote for him, it would be a good idea to review the horror, trauma, and terrible things that Trump has subjected the country to in just twenty seven month’s time. This is obviously a very sarcastic comment when you take an unbiased look at what has happened during the Trump Presidency.

The many previous posts we did on this topic identified well over 200 good things that have happened to America and Americans since Trump became President can found by entering the phrase “the horrors and destruction” in the search box above. Today, let’s add another dozen or so good things that are going on in the country even though the doubters hate the reality that Trump is President:

- The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits dropped to the lowest level in nearly half a century last month, March, 2019, dropping to 192,000, the lowest number since September, 1969, when the population was much smaller.

- The four week moving average of unemployment benefit filings last month was at the lowest level since November, 1969.

- National retail sales jumped by 1.6% last month, the highest growth level in eighteen months, indicating a still strong economy.

- The stock market has rebounded from a late 2018 drop and is almost back to record high levels.

- The infamous, expensive, and discredited Mueller investigation has cleared Trump of collusion, obstruction, and any other criminal activity.

- A strong March, 2019 jobs report kept the national unemployment rate at 3.8%, close to a 50 year low.

- Hispanics, traditionally a very strong Democratic voting bloc, gave Trump a 50% approval rate according to a recent McLaughlin and Associates poll, a 50% approval rate in a recent Marist/NPR/PBs survey, and a still high 45% approval rate in a recent Morning Consult/Politico poll.

- According to a recent Rasmussen poll, 41% of Americans feel America is on the right track as compared to mid-high 20s during Obama’s last full year in office in 2016.

- Another Rasmussen poll found that the overall approval rate of Trump is at 49%, a number that has been trending upwards and a rate that is higher than Obama’s at the same time of each administration.

- Trump donated his latest salary of $100,000 to immigration support, much like he has donated all of his previous salary dollars to supporting veterans’ needs, the fight against alcoholism, and other worthy causes that affect many Americans.

- The Trump administration has launched a $350 million effort to fight opioid addiction, through research and treatment, in an effort to reduce opioid overdose deaths by 40% in four especially hard hit states, Kentucky, Ohio, New York, and Massachusetts.

For those of you that have hated on Trump since day one, and given your obvious gross error in judgment relative to Trump given the well 200 accomplishments we have previously listed and the ten newest accomplishments listed above, let me ask that you to do us all a favor by implementing the following changes in your behavior and attitude:

• Chill out, tamp down your TDS affliction. No matter how much you hate Trump on a sexist, personal basis, get over it. He is the legally and duly elected President, he will be around for a while so refocus your hatred on more constructive issues and matters. You will live a lot longer if you take your hatred out of your heart and soul and devote it to something positive.
• I would really appreciate it if some of you would apologize to the Trump voters you have disrespected in some of the grossest terms possible over the past year. You have called millions of voters racists, ignorant, stupid, Nazis, KKK members, and other horrible names simply because you disagreed with their voting choice. No American should be called such disgusting names simply because they exercised their Constitutional rights to the best of their abilities. Plus, slandering over 60 million Americans is no way to unite the country and get it focused on the real issues facing us all.
• More personally, I would like, no I am demanding, an apology from some of you for your slanderous and disgusting name calling because in doing so, you insulted and disrespected my sister, my family members, my friends, and my co-workers who simply voted their conscience. I will defend their right to vote anyway they wanted and will no put up with your childish and vicious venom and bile directed at them, very important people in my life.
• And finally, I challenge you to read the following blog post, a post that shows quite clearly that it was hateful people like some of you and your silence during the Obama years that actually caused Trump to be elected. Thus, the people you hate for voting for Trump are actually looking back at you in the mirror:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/03/how-american-liberals-and-washington.html

If you were silent in the dozens of instances listed in this post then you were responsible for the very thing you hate: a Trump Presidency. Or put another way, a so far successful and productive Trump Presidency. Over 200 accomplishments in a little less than two years is not too shabby despite many of you wanting both Trump and the country to fail.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Daniel Moynihan's Welfare Prediction Accuracy From 1965

I have never been a fan of the great majority of politicians. I find them shallow, selfish, and incapable of resolving even the smallest of problems and issues facing the country. However, there are a small handful that were willing to be honest and tried to fix what was broken, putting the country ahead of their self enrichment and ego. One of them was Daniel Moynihan, a U.S. Senator from New York and U.S. ambassador to the U.N.

Three things impressed me about Moynihan. First, he was just plain smarter than most of his peers in his day and today’s politicians. Second, although he was a Democrat, he never hesitated to criticize Democrats or liberals when they deserved to be criticized. And finally, he is one of the few politicians who accurately predicted anything correctly.

Back in the mid-1960s, he predicted that the growth of the welfare state in this country would result in the breakdown of the black family structure in our cities and lead to “crime, violence, unrest, disorder.” The following are excerpts from a paper he wrote 50 years ago:

From the wild Irish slums  of the 19th century Eastern seaboard, to the riot-torn suburbs of Los Ageles , there is one unmistakable lesson in American history; a community that allows a large number of men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future -- that community asks for and gets chaos. Crime, violence, unrest, disorder -- most particularly the furious, unrestrained lashing out at the whole social structure -- that is not only to be expected; it is very near to inevitable. And it is richly deserved.

...

The majority of Negro children receive public assistance under the AFDC program at one point or another in their childhood. At present, 14 percent of Negro children are receiving AFDC assistance, as against 2 percent of white children. Eight percent of white children receive such assistance at some time, as against 56 percent of nonwhites, according to an extrapolation based on NEW data. …

...

Again, the situation may be said to be worsening. The AFDC program, deriving from the long established Mothers' Aid programs, was established in 1935 principally to care for widows and orphans, although the legislation covered all children in homes deprived of parental support because one or both of their parents are absent or incapacitated. 

…

The steady expansion of this welfare program, as of public assistance programs in general, can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation in the United States.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan - The Negro Family: The Case For National Action

Office of Policy Planning and Research, United States Department of Labor, March 1965

What has happened in the African American community since he wrote that paper 50 years ago? Let’s see:

• 71% of African American children are born into a single parent household, up from about 25% when he wrote this paper.
• This compares to 53% of Hispanic children and 36% of white children.
• Kids from homes with single and unmarried moms are five times more likely to live in poverty and 40% less likely to graduate from high school.

But it gets worse, according to a May 15, 2015 NewsMax article written by Ed Moy:

• Since Obama became President, African American unemployment has increased 60%.
• In that same time period, the Black/White wealth gap has grown to a 24-year high.
• African Americans who live in poverty have increased to 27%.
• Only 1.7% of Federal Small Business Administration loans went to Black businesses, compared to 8% under the administration of President George W. Bush.

So it appears that Moynihan was right. Unbridled growth in the welfare state has not lifted a whole lot of African Americans out of poverty. In fact, according to a Washington Post article and its graphs from a few years ago, seen below, it has not lifted a whole lot of anybody out of poverty,  the poverty rate in this country has remained about constant since the mid-1960s despite spending upwards of $20 TRILLION to reduce it (double click on the graph to enlarge)



What is also very interesting this graph is that the poverty rate was falling dramatically from the late 1950s into the mid 1960s. At that point, the Federal government and LBJ’s “War On Poverty” kicked in and the downward trend in reducing the poverty percentage stopped declining almost overnight. Which raises the obvious question: did the Federal government growth in welfare programs actually STOP the decline in the poverty rate?

But even as the poverty level percentage remained unchanged over a fifty year period, the government and taxpayer spending to try and reduce it grew at an almost exponential rate with no corresponding effect on poverty:



And while the percentage of African Americans living in poverty has shrunk over the past fifty years, it is still more than double the poverty rate of white and Asian Americans and the African American poverty rate is now growing significantly faster than the poverty rate of other races:

So, maybe it is time to revisit the insights Moynihan published fifty years ago since:

• The African-American family breakdown he predicted has occurred as the Federal government and Washington political class spent more and more on welfare programs which made it easier for single parents to have and support children without a family infrastructure to make it happen.
• African American kids’ futures are not much better than they were fifty years ago, and possibly quite worse, given crime levels, low high school graduation levels, etc.
• Despite spending upwards of $20 TRILLION since the LBJ administration, African American poverty levels and employment levels and opportunities have not improved much at all.

Another political class effort that has failed miserably, expensively, and which may have made the original perceived problem even worse. And Moynihan saw it all coming decades ago.

But his insights should not surprise us since even though he was a member of that same political class, he also had two insightful observations about it:

The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it is so rare.

Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from life what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government agencies to do good.

Great insights but let me add another from another brilliant man, Albert Einstein: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

Maybe it is time to stop the insanity of the past fifty years and find a way to compassionately transition from the destructive Federal government welfare programs that Moynihan warned us about in 1965 into a new paradigm, where government programs actually do what they are supposed to do at a lower cost without ripping the concept of family apart. That would certainly make Moynihan excited and happy and a lot of Americans better off than they are today.Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w