Martin Luther King’s Birthday, “The Great Society”, and the Trump Economic Boom…a Chance to Break the Cycle

MLK-Character-Matters

Today is a national holiday, celebrating the birthday of Civil Rights Pioneer, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Somewhere, up in heaven, he is shaking his head in mournful embarrassment.

As a lifelong (59 years young) resident of the Memphis area, I continue to witness the dissolution of the once strong and proud Black American Family Unit.

I am also, as are most of you, bearing witness to Black and White Liberal Politicians making excuses for the out-of-control, self-inflicted genocide of 13% of America’s Population, as they blame it on “Racial Inequality”, and somehow being unable to succeed due to the actions of Americans who lived almost 200 years ago and whose statues are somehow still oppressing them to this day.

This “oppression” somehow continues, even though a black man held the most powerful political office in the Free World for 8 years and was given carte blanche by both the Main Stream Media and the Political Elite in Washington, DC, to do just about whatever he wanted to do.

America’s Far Left Political Activists, including this Former President of the United States, are still attempting, what is known in both sports and military strategy, as a “misdirection” play.

While these politicians and paid protesters shout about “equality” in front of every television camera that they can get in front of, at the same time, here in the real world, black children are being born into a situation which handicaps them from the start: the burden of an illegitimate birth and the reality of a fatherless home.

How many black children are being born out-of-wedlock?

Among non-Hispanic blacks, the figure is highest, at 72.2 percent; for American Indians/Alaska Natives, it’s 66.9 percent; 53.5 percent for Hispanics; 29.4 percent for non-Hispanic whites; and a mere 17.1 percent for Asians/Pacific Islanders.

These Americans, unlike the majority of us, are growing up without appropriate parental guidance, i.e., no one teaching them “the way in which they should go”

What are the consequences of growing up without a strong Father figure?

How did the once strong Black American Family Unit get torn asunder?

Back in the 60s, President Lyndon Johnson (whose big hand I once shook, at his ranch, as a little boy, after his presidential term) and the Democrats, brought forth a plan, called “the Great Society”. It was decided, in order to ensure that everyone would have an equal opportunity in America, that Uncle Sugar would step in to fill in the gaps.

Two seminal pieces of legislation were passed.

First, the Civil Rights Bill that JFK promised to sign, before his assassination, was passed into law. This Act banned discrimination based on race and gender in employment and ending segregation in all public facilities.

It also helped to cement in stone, minorities’ loyalty to the Democratic Party, which continues to this day.

The second bill that LBJ signed into law was the sweeping ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY ACT OF 1964. It created the Office of Economic Opportunity whose stated purpose was to attack the roots of American poverty. A Job Corps was then established to provide vocational training.

A preschool program designed to help disadvantaged students arrive at kindergarten ready to learn, named HEADSTART, was then established. Then came VOLUNTEERS IN SERVICE TO AMERICA (VISTA), which was set up as a domestic Peace Corps. Schools in impoverished American regions would now receive volunteer teaching attention. Federal funds were sent to struggling communities to attack unemployment and illiteracy.

What Johnson told Americans, as he campaigned in 1964, was that the establishment of this “Great Society” was going to eliminate the problems of America’s poor.

It had the opposite effect

The Great Society created a dependent class, which, instead of diminishing as it’s members joined the workforce, increased from generation to generation, relying on the federal government to provide their every need.

Uncle Sugar became Mother, Father, Preacher, and Doctor to generations of Americans. This “plantation mentality” continues to this day.

A few years ago, I worked at our county’s State Employment Center Office.

While at the Employment Office, I was able to observe Americans, both Black and White, down on their luck, struggling to find work and survive in this economy. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of “unemployed ” who came to this particular office were Black.

I saw Black American Families whose existence living on the Government Dole, had become generational.

It is these people whom Obama and the Democrats have hypnotized into believing that Uncle Sugar loves them, and is their only solution to surviving a stifling existence.

They are so, so wrong.

The strength and vitality of America does not come from the benevolence of a Nanny-state Federal Government.

As the greatest American President of my lifetime, Ronald Reagan said:

The nine words you never want to hear are: I’m from the Government and I’m here to help.

Being enslaved to the Government Dole steals one’s ambition. It takes away any impetus or desire to create a better life for yourself and your family, to challenge yourself to pick yourself up by your bootstraps and pursue the American Dream. It makes you reliant on a politically motivated spider’s web full of government bureaucrats who view you and your family as job security.

I watched American citizens trapped in this web of government bureaucracy, so numbed of any initiative that they once had, that they seemed offended that they actually had to prove that they inquired about three jobs that week in order to keep their “benefits”. Others seemed puzzled that they had to search through the state data base and pick out a job that they wanted to talk to an interviewer about receiving a referral to, and weren’t just simply handed a job when they walked through the door.

Instead of moving forward, by exercising the self-reliance that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached so well, these people I saw, were content on being “taken care of” by Uncle Sugar, as if being held down by their own poor, miserable circumstance, was a good thing.

During the Obama Administration, racial division in American became intentionally exacerbated for the purpose of political gain and the results of LBJ’s “Great Society” became the lead story in every television newscast, on every newspaper front page, and on every internet news/political website.

Dr. King, I am sorry to tell you that racism and injustice is still going on in America. Unfortunately, it will not end any time soon, There are too many race-baiters profiting off of it.

Including those who are dead set in somehow ending the time in office of our current President, Donald J. Trump.

Which is very strange to me, sir. You see, those who wish him to be gone have adopted the worn-out tactic of accusing Trump of racism, which is a very odd tactic to use.

The reason that I say that is because the National Black Unemployment Rate fell from 7.2 percent to 6.8 percent in the month of December, beating the previous low of 7 percent set in April 2000.

The other thing that puzzles me about the efforts by  self-proclaimed”Black Leaders” to label the President a racist is best explained by Stephen Moore, a writer for the Heritage Foundation, in a syndicated article which I have pulled an excerpt from  in The Chicago Tribune, which was posted on August 21st of last year…

No one cared more about the plight of black Americans than Barack Obama — our first African-American president — who won well more than 90 percent of the black vote. But the sad paradox of Obama’s presidency is that a president who was going to lift up black America economically didn’t deliver. From 2009 to 2015, the incomes of black Americans fell by more than $900 per family adjusted for inflation.

So far under Trump, median family incomes have risen by more than $1,000, according‎ to Sentier Research and based on Census Bureau numbers. These numbers are not broken down by race, but it’s a pretty good bet that black incomes have risen with those of other races under Trump.

What about other metrics of black economic progress under Trump? It’s early for sure, but we have some preliminary results since Election Day, when the stock market started its latest bull market run.

The black unemployment rate has fallen by a full percentage point in the last year, black labor force participation is up and the number of black Americans with a job has risen by 600,000 from last year. Preliminary data show black wages and incomes are up since the election.

The rate of job growth per month for blacks under Trump has so far been 40 percent higher than the monthly average under ‎Obama. Trump has averaged nearly 30,000 new black jobs per month. That’s especially remarkable because Obama was elected when employment was way down.

Another issue that is critically important to black and Hispanic economic progress is good schools. Trump is advancing the idea of school choice so that every child can attend a quality school, public or private. In cities such as Washington, D.C., and Milwaukee, the children who benefit from voucher and scholarship programs are predominantly black. Trump wants to increase by tenfold the number of black children who benefit from these vouchers and scholarships.

The goal here is to give every poor or minority child the same range of education choices that wealthy families have.

The same people who denounce Trump for being a racist hypocritically oppose Trump’s plan for better school options for black children. I have heard many liberal commentators compare Trump to George Wallace, the late Alabama governor who defended school segregation and stood in front of the white public schools with armed guards to keep the black children out.

Now we have liberals and teachers unions figuratively standing in front of the high-quality white private schools like modern-day George Wallaces trying to keep black children out.

Trump also wants more infrastructure spending, more energy jobs and more apprenticeship programs so our youth have access to better jobs and better training. Disproportionately, blacks and other minorities will benefit from these programs, because fewer have the financial capability to go to a four-year college.

So is Trump a racist who doesn’t care about the future of black Americans? Let’s face it. He’s no Jack Kemp when it comes to talking about race and healing wounds with his words. But Trump is creating more jobs and higher incomes for blacks and other minorities and is trying to give a better education to every disadvantaged black child in America. That is a pretty impressive civil rights record. ‎

Dr. King, the part of your magnificent speech about “the content of their character” has been purposefully ignored by the professional race-baiters and assorted politicians (but, I repeat myself), once again, in an effort to make them and their political cronies flush with power and money.

Sir, your call for self-reliance took a back seat to their self-serving agenda, a long time ago.

And, that resulted in the dissolution of the Black American Nuclear Family, a cycle of poverty, and an inability or unwillingness of some to take a risk and to break out of a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure perpetuated by self-serving politicians and “community leaders” who have made careers out of limiting the participation of Black Americans in the American Dream.

You had a dream, sir.

And, I am certain that each one of them has one, too.

And, none of them should be held back from working hard and succeeding simply because achieving the American Dream on their own does not fit into a political party’s self-serving agenda.

Until He Comes,

KJ

MLK, “The Great Society”, And The Vanishing Black Family Unit

AFBrancoBlackLeadereship12114Tomorrow is a national holiday, celebrating the birthday of Civil Rights Pioneer, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Somewhere, up in heaven, he is shaking his head in mournful embarrassment.

As a lifelong (56 years young) resident of the Memphis area, I continue to witness the dissolution of the once strong and proud Black American Family Unit.

I am also, as are most of you, bearing witness to Black and White Liberal Politicians making excuses for the out-of-control, self-inflicted genocide of 13% of America’s Population, as they blame it on “Racial Inequality”, while a Black Man sits behind a desk in the Oval Office at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, holding the most powerful leadership position in the Free World.

America’s Far Left Political Activists, including the President of the United States, are presently attempting, what is known in both sports and military strategy, as a “misdirection” play.

Whil these politicians and paid protesters shout about “equality” in front of every television camera that they can get in front of, at the same time, here in the real world, black children are being born into a situation which handicaps them from the start: the burden of an illegitimate birth and the reality of a fatherless home.

How many black children are being born out of wedlock?

Among non-Hispanic blacks, the figure is highest, at 72.2 percent; for American Indians/Alaska Natives, it’s 66.9 percent; 53.5 percent for Hispanics; 29.4 percent for non-Hispanic whites; and a mere 17.1 percent for Asians/Pacific Islanders.

These Americans, unlike the majority of us, are growing up without appropriate parental guidance, i.e., no one teaching them “the way in which they should go”

What are the consequences of growing up without a strong Father figure?

The Memphis CBS Affiliate, WREG, has a story which provides an example.

A large fight broke out in the McDonald’s located at Bull Frog Corner in Horn Lake (Mississippi, a Memphis suburb) Tuesday night.

Staff at the restaurant say tensions between rival gangs sparked the fight. One adult and one juvenile are facing charges, but people who have seen the video tell WREG they think more than just two people should be in trouble for all of this.

Video taken inside the restaurant is shaky, but you can clearly see kids fighting, throwing fists, and screaming, and the onlookers not backing away.

Michael Little couldn’t believe what he saw as he watched the video. He lives in Horn Lake and goes to that McDonald’s restaurant all the time.

Horn Lake and Southaven High School faced off on the basketball court Tuesday night, and police knew to be on alert because people who go to the game are known to fight after.

Chief Darryl Whaley with Horn Lake Police said, “We had heard there was potentially going to be some problems after this game either at the school or the McDonald’s. We were covering both locations.”

Police say they offered to help McDonald’s managers clear out the crowd, but they said no. Moments later, the fight broke out. No injuries were reported.

McDonald’s employees tell WREG the fight was between two local gangs, and this isn’t the first time they caused problems at this restaurant. Police arrested Anthony Williams, also known as Twin, and a juvenile. They don’t expect to make any more arrests, but locals are questioning that call.

“Just from the video. It looked like there were a lot of people in there fighting,” Little said.

Folks in Horn Lake say this kind of behavior is not what they want their city to be known for.

“Everybody who lives here knows that doesn’t happen every day.” Little said.

He says he won’t forget what he saw in this video for quite some time.

WREG reached out to the McDonald’s managers, but didn’t hear back. Employees expect this fight will spark another one, possibly on Friday night.

Why is this happening? How did we get here?

Back in the 60s, President Lyndon Johnson (whose big hand I once shook, at his ranch, as a little boy, after his presidential term) and the Democrats, brought forth a plan, called “the Great Society”. It was decided, in order to ensure that everyone would have an equal opportunity in America, that Uncle Sugar would step in to fill in the gaps.

Two seminal pieces of legislation were passed.

First, the Civil Rights Bill that JFK promised to sign, before his assassination, was passed into law. This Act banned discrimination based on race and gender in employment and ending segregation in all public facilities.

It also helped to cement in stone, minorities’ loyalty to the Democratic Party, which continues to this day.

The second bill that LBJ signed into law was the sweeping ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY ACT OF 1964. It created the Office of Economic Opportunity whose stated purpose was to attack the roots of American poverty. A Job Corps was then established to provide vocational training.

A preschool program designed to help disadvantaged students arrive at kindergarten ready to learn, named HEADSTART, was then established. Then came VOLUNTEERS IN SERVICE TO AMERICA (VISTA), which was set up as a domestic Peace Corps. Schools in impoverished American regions would now receive volunteer teaching attention. Federal funds were sent to struggling communities to attack unemployment and illiteracy.

What Johnson told Americans, as he campaigned in 1964, was that the establishment of this “Great Society” was going to eliminate the problems of America’s poor.

It had the opposite effect

The Great Society created a dependent class, which, instead of diminishing as it’s members joined the workforce, increased from generation to generation, relying on the federal government to provide their every need.

Uncle Sugar became Mother, Father, Preacher, and Doctor to generations of Americans. This “plantation mentality” continues to this day.

A couple of years ago, I worked at our county’s State Employment Center Office.

While at the Employment Office, I was able to observe Americans, both Black and White, down on their luck, struggling to find work and survive in this economy. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of “unemployed ” who came to this particular office were Black.

I saw Black American Families whose existence living on the Government Dole, had become generational.

It is these people whom Obama and the Democrats have hypnotized into believing that Uncle Sugar loves them, and is their only solution to surviving a stifling existence.

They are so, so wrong.

The strength and vitality of America does not come from the benevolence of a Nanny-state Federal Government.

As the greatest American President of my lifetime, Ronald Reagan said:

The nine words you never want to hear are: I’m from the Government and I’m here to help.

Being enslaved to the Government Dole steals one’s ambition. It takes away any impetus or desire to create a better life for yourself and your family, to challenge yourself to pick yourself up by your bootstraps and pursue the American Dream. It makes you reliant on a politically motivated spider’s web full of government bureaucrats who view you and your family as job security.

I watched American citizens trapped in this web of government bureaucracy, so numbed of any initiative that they once had, that they seemed offended that they actually had to prove that they inquired about three jobs that week in order to keep their “benefits”. Others seemed puzzled that they had to search through the state data base and pick out a job that they wanted to talk to an interviewer about receiving a referral to, and weren’t just simply handed a job when they walked through the door.

Instead of moving forward, by exercising the self-reliance that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached so well, these people I saw, were content on being “taken care of” by Uncle Sugar, as if being held down by their own poor, miserable circumstance, was a good thing.

Since August, the results of LBJ’s “Great Society” have been the lead story in every television newscast, on every newspaper front page, and on every internet news/political website.

Dr. King, I am sorry to tell you that racism and injustice is still going on in America. Unfortunately, it will not end any time soon, There are too many race-baiters profiting off of it.

Including, the President of the United States.

The part of your magnificent speech about “the content of their character” has been purposefully ignored by the professional race-baiters and assorted politicians (but, I repeat myself), once again, in the aftermath of the death pf Career Criminal Eric Garner.

Dr. King, your call for self-reliance took a back seat to their self-serving agenda, a long time ago.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Terry McAuliffe and the Greentech Automotive Scandal…A Mississippian’s Perspective

terrymcauliffeBack in the days after the Civil War, Mississippi, among other states, in what was formerly the Confederacy, was invaded by a bunch of  scalawags, known as “carpetbaggers”, because of the kind of luggage they carried with them.

Well, y’all, recently the Magnolia State got suckered by another one of “them critters.” Pull yourself a chair up, get cozy, and let ol’ KJ tell you all about him.

Terry McAuliffe is an American businessman, fundraiser, politician, and former chairman of the Democratic Party. He served as chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 2001 to 2005 and served as co-chairman of President Bill Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign and as chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2009 Virginia gubernatorial election and is the Democratic nominee in the 2013 Virginia gubernatorial election.

McAuliffe recently served as President of the Greentech Automotive Company, from 2010 until he resigned in December 2012..

The Washington Free Beacon presented the following five points to remember about Greentech Automotive, in an article published last week:

1. GreenTech fell short on job promises multiple times

McAuliffe told Virginians in 2009 that the new car company would create 1,500 jobs for the state.

McAuliffe did not tell Virginians that the company was also in talks with the state of Mississippi, and would soon opt to move its operations there.

However, things have not panned out with GreenTech in Mississippi either.

McAuliffe projected that GreenTech would be churn out 10,000 cars in its first year and employ thousands.

At this point it is unclear whether GreenTech is producing any jobs. Further informationBelow.]

GreenTech is still operating at what was supposed to be a temporary facility in Horn Lake, Miss.

Although McAuliffe claimed that ground was broken at the company’s planed permanent facility, local investigators found that there was nothing but overgrown grass covering the plot on which it is supposed to be located.

2. GreenTech relies on a foreign “visa-for-sale” investment scheme

At the center of GreenTech’s fundraising operation is the controversial EB-5 visa program.

The program allows foreign nationals to get a visa if they invest $500,000 to $1 million in a project or business that provides U.S. jobs.

GreenTech partners with Gulf Coast Funds Management (GCFM), a company that is authorized by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to collect EB-5 investments for GreenTech.

GCFM has collected at least $45.5 million from foreign investors for GreenTech through the program. Anthony Rodham, a close friend of McAuliffe who also happens to be the brother of Hillary Clinton, runs GCFM.

Many have been skeptical about whether the visa program was being used properly.

Virginia officials labeled the company a “visa-for-sale scheme” and feared that doing business with GreenTech could eventually “give the Commonwealth a black eye.”

3. GreenTech is being investigated by the SEC

Both GreenTech and GCFM are targets of a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigation.

Although the details of the investigation are still unclear, both companies have confirmed that the SEC subpoenaed them for documents in May of this year.

Documents made available by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) make clear that the investigation centers around the use of the EB-5 visa program.

McAuliffe, who quietly resigned from the company in December, claims that he had no knowledge of any pending investigation at the time of his resignation.

4. GreenTech is at the center of a Homeland Security investigation

GreenTech and McAuliffe have also found themselves involved in a Department of Homeland Security investigation.

USCIS director Alejandro Mayorkas allegedly assisted Rodham and GCFM win approval for an EB-5 visa application, even after the application and the subsequent appeal were rejected.

Documents revealed that Rodham directly contacted Mayorkas and urged him to approve pending visa applications.

Concerns were also raised that Mayorkas expedited the approval of applicants that were held for “fraud/national security.”

5. GreenTech’s parent company is based in the British Virgin Islands

GreenTech is owned by Capital Wealth Holdings, an investment company incorporated in the tax haven, the British Virgin Islands.

GreenTech president and Chinese businessman, Charles Wang, owns the investment company.

Wang is an expert on the EB-5 visa program and has coached other U.S. companies on how to effectively make use of it.

Of course, Terry McAuliffe sees things differently.

According to McAuliffe, in an op ed piece he just wrote for the Washington Post:

I’ve not been contacted in any way by those conducting the investigation and have no knowledge of it beyond what has been reported. From what has been reported, the investigation appears to be looking at a document allegedly prepared for potential investors — something I was not responsible for as chairman.

Republicans have also criticized the company for employing only about 100 people. Of course, that’s about 100 jobs that would not have existed if we had not taken a risk on this company. The company has taken longer to develop than many people expected, including me, but taking a risk on an innovative company is a critical part of the American system, and most business leaders I speak with agree that it’s not uncommon for a company to face challenges meeting its goals.

GreenTech was started because those involved invested their own money in high-tech manufacturing. In this case, it was manufacturing a small electric vehicle that had already won an annual award. Like every start-up during the Great Recession, the company faced headwinds. Those included a bureaucratic slowdown in a bipartisan visa program known as EB-5, which brings capital from overseas to create jobs here in the United States for many companies. I joined a variety of business and political leaders from both parties who expressed frustration to officials at the agency overseeing the program.

A further headwind is that manufacturing isn’t easy, and manufacturing a new kind of car is even harder. The company has invested in research and development, testing and safety to perfect the design. While Nissan worked to develop electric vehicles for about 18 years before launching the Leaf, GreenTech made progress in just a few years during a more challenging economic time. If GreenTech succeeds, it will be a step forward for innovative manufacturing.

I have an interest — both personally and financially — in the company succeeding, and I believe that it will. As a minority shareholder, my return will be determined by the success of a long process of testing, manufacturing, marketing and selling vehicles all over the world.

The “temporary” Greentech Automotive Plant sits just a few miles down the road from where I am writing this post. The fact is, according to both current and former employees, fewer than 100 workers are producing no more than one car every two or three days.

Meanwhile, further down Highway 61, overlooking the casinos in Tunica Mississippi, sits a weed-covered piece of land, once presented to job-hungry Mississippians, as  “a Field of Dreams”, which has wound up being a “a Lot of Empty Promises”.

Hey, Virginians…Caveat Emptor.

Until He Comes,

KJ