The housing bubble began in 1995. This means that the housing crisis will last for almost another decade.

The housing bubble began in 1995.

This means that the housing crisis will last for almost another decade.

Pundits, politicians, journalists and Nobel prize winners have all been looking at various political explanations of the housing bubble. For years, they said the bubble didn’t exist at all, but late in 2007 when it clearly was leaking, they blamed it on Alan Greenspan or George Bush, using some tortured logic.

Almost none of the mainstream analysts and economists even admitted that there was a real estate bubble until 2006 or so, when Nouriel Roubini discovered the bubble and announced it to the world. By that time, it was already pretty clear that it had begun to leak.

I started writing about the real estate bubble in 2004, but I too thought at that time that it was caused by the low near-zero interest rates that Alan Greenspan and the Fed had put into effect. I later rejected that view, as I came to understand that the bubble occurred in countries around the world.

I’ve just become aware of a 2002 research report by Dean Baker of the Washington-based Center for Economic Policy and Research. This paper shows clearly that the real estate bubble began in 1995, the same time as the dot-com bubble.

Baker shows this in several ways, but the following graph shows it most clearly:


Cost of owning real estate versus renting, 1975-2002 <font size=-2>(Source: Dean Baker)</font>
Cost of owning real estate versus renting, 1975-2002 (Source: Dean Baker)

This graph compares real estate prices with rental prices. As you can see, the two graphs began diverging significantly in 1995, with cost of ownership surging.

This REALLY makes a lot of sense, because it corresponds exactly to the start of the dot-com bubble. Furthermore, although the real estate bubble didn’t START in 2003, it really skyrocketed starting in 2003, and that also corresponds to the huge credit bubble.

Let’s take another look at this chart, that I first posted in 2007:


Generational 'moods' overlaying Dow Industrials since 1950
Generational ‘moods’ overlaying Dow Industrials since 1950

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The housing bubble began in 1995.: This means that the housing crisis will last for almost another decade…. (8-Sep-2009)

Laughable SEC report on Madoff absolves SEC management of blame: “Confusion” and “inexperience” of young SEC staff members are blamed…. (6-Sep-2009)

Stories of massive generational fraud and corruption continue to pour out: Long-time readers of this web site know how much my life… (14-Apr-2009)

The economy, the stimulus plan and the budget plan all continue to unravel: Markets keep falling as world economic trends continue to plunge…. (2-Mar-2009)

Neil Howe calls Early Gen-Xers the “dumbest generation”: I disagree – Boomers are the dumbest generation…. (10-Dec-2008)

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A generational view of China’s growing melamine food disaster: On Thursday, the FDA issued a nationwide alert, banning Chinese dairy products… (17-Nov-2008)

How Boomers and Generation-Xers brought about the dumbing down of Information Technology (IT) : Software development has adopted a Java cookbook approach that leads to project failures. Also: How Digimarc Corp. self-destructed with management’s cookbook programming mentality. (1-Jul-2008)


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China and Taiwan: Understanding two different war paradigms: None of Obama, Clinton or McCain have any idea of this…. (23-Apr-08)

NY Governor Elliot Spitzer: A Generation-Xer gets his comeuppance: Rarely has someone’s fall from grace been met with so much glee…. (12-Mar-08)

Reader comments on the Nihilism of Generation-X: Who’s more at fault for our problems – Gen-Xers or Boomers?… (29-Jan-08)

The nihilism and self-destructiveness of Generation X: Who’s more to blame for our troubles: The Boomer generation or Generation X?… (21-Jan-08)

Markets fall as investors are increasingly unsettled by bad economic news: Hopes for quick return to “normal” bubble growth are fading…. (21-Nov-07)

I described this chart in detail in the above-mentioned article, but here I only wish to relate this chart to this new information about the real estate bubble.

The point of inflection that occurred in 1995, the time when all the Great Depression survivors disappeared (retired or died), and Boomers rose to senior management positions. At this time, the cautious investment strategies of the risk-averse Depression survivors were replaced by the reckless investment strategies of the Boomers. We now know that the real estate bubble began at the same time of generational change.

Then, in 2003, the credit bubble exploded, and so did the real estate bubble.

This really ties things together from the point of view of Generational Dynamics. It’s always bothered me a little that the real estate bubble apparently began in 2003, but now with the real estate bubble starting in 1995, along with the dot-com bubble, everything fits together.

Now, there’s a little more to this story.

I found my way to the 2002 paper on the housing bubble through a blog entry by its author, Dean Baker. Baker was commenting on a NY Times article that congratulated President Obama, Timothy Geithner, Lawrence Summers, Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson because “the financial crisis of 2008 turned out to be far less bad than it could have been.”

Here are some excerpts:

“What If the Captain of the Titanic Managed to Get Three Quarters of the Passengers on Life Boats?David Leonhardt wants to congratulate the gang that led us into the worse economic downturn in more than 70 years because it will not be as bad as the Great Depression. Yes, the downturn could be worse, but let’s be serious.

This crash was 100 percent preventable to anyone watching the economy and capable of doing 3rd grade arithmetic. The housing bubble was easy to see and it should have been obvious that its collapse would devastate the economy. …

This is a complete disaster. Any custodian, dishwasher or shoe salesperson who showed the same degree of incompetence on their job would be fired instantly. There is no reason that the country should engage in this soft bigotry of low expectations when it comes to economic policy. This crew blew it just about as badly as anyone conceivably could. Saying that you didn’t give us another great depression is not exactly a winning re-election slogan.”

This is what drives me crazy. Here’s a guy from a Washington DC economic think tank. He’s done the research. He’s established that the real estate bubble is correlated to the technology bubble. He offers no opinion at all as to what happened in 1995 to cause both bubbles to start growing; indeed, he has no idea why the bubbles occurred at all, and why they began in 1995, as opposed to 1985 or 2005. He doesn’t even pretend to have the answers to these questions.

And yet, even though he has no idea about how the bubble started, he’s ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN he knows all the answers about how to keep the bubble from crashing. He says, “This crash was 100 percent preventable to anyone watching the economy and capable of doing 3rd grade arithmetic. The housing bubble was easy to see and it should have been obvious that its collapse would devastate the economy.”

Well how the hell was the crash preventable? Perhaps he thinks that Congress could have passed a law making it illegal for bubbles to crash. What more could President Obama, Timothy Geithner, Lawrence Summers, Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson have done beyond what they did do — flood the economy with trillions of dollars worth of bailouts, stimulus and quantitative easing?

In fact, now that we know that the housing bubble began in 1995, we can draw some further conclusions: Since the bubble started leaking in 2006, it lasted for 11 years, and so we can apply the Law of Mean Reversion and, assuming that it leaks at roughly the same rate that it grew in the first place, the housing crisis will last 11 years, until 2017.

The credit and real estate bubbles were hundreds of trillions of dollars in size, and growing. To say that the crash was preventable is typical of the nonsense produced by economists today.

Speaking of economists who produce lots of nonsense, Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman has just written a lengthy article titled, “How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?” Krugman won the Nobel Prize because he met the prize committee’s major criterion: Hatred of George Bush. In his columns, he’s pretty much given up any pretense of economics, since each conclusion he reaches is based on ideological considerations. One of the major reasons that economists got it so wrong is that they interpret everything through an ideological filter. Krugman’s new article might be called an ideological history of economics of the 20th century. Pathetic.

At any rate, now that we know that the housing bubble began in 1995, we know that it couldn’t have been caused by George Bush or Ben Bernanke. It also wasn’t caused by Alan Greenspan’s near-zero interest rate policy, since that began in 2002. Ideologues on the right might try to blame it on President Bill Clinton, but that’s silly as well. The real estate and dot-com technology bubbles were caused by the disappearance of the risk-averse Great Depression survivors from senior management positions in the early 1990s, and the dumb investments made by Boomers when they reached those senior management positions.

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the Financial Topics thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Read the entire thread for discussions on how to protect your money.) (8-Sep-2009)

News from the American Renaissance

News from the American Renaissance

September 16, 2009

Congressman John Rarick, RIP, Special to AR News; 0 comments
A one-of-a-kind Southern congressman passes away.

Judge: King Children Must Meet to Discuss Estate, Atlanta Journal-Constitution; 0 comments
King children squabbling over money.

Wilson’s Son Says Congressman Is Not Racist, Yahoo! News ; 0 comments
Former president can read minds.

Ethics Panel Defers Probe on Jesse Jackson Jr., AP; 0 comments
House ethics committee has its hands full.

Smithsonian Reviews Policy After Rental ‘Mistake’, WTOP-FM (Washington, D.C.); 0 comments
Smithsonian Institution has no room for immigration reform group.

As Charter Schools Grow in Suburbs, Critics Raise Red Flags, Star Tribune (Minneapolis-St. Paul); 0 comments
Charter schools are too white.

Minority Report: The Non-White Gamer’s Experience, Kotaku; 0 comments
Publishers slow to pursue non-white video game market.

College Student With Sword Kills Burglary Suspect, San Francisco Chronicle; 0 comments
Newspaper dances frantically around the subject of race.

Toronto Cops Are Winning on Race, Toronto Sun; 0 comments
Twenty percent of Toronto cops are non-white.

Mohammed Now No.1 Baby Boys’ Name in London, London Telegraph; 0 comments
And in three other English regions, as well.

District 9 Labelled Xenophobic by Nigerians, Guardian (Manchester); 0 comments
Nigerians don’t like the way they’re portrayed in new sci-fi movie.

The Reality of Economic Recovery

The Reality of Economic Recovery

Sunday 13 September 2009

by: Jim Hightower, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

photo
Ben Bernanke was appointed to another term as fed chairman by Obama. (Photo: Getty Images)

Great news, America! Having just celebrated Labor Day, we can now bask in the revelation that our long economic nightmare is over. Forget recession, much less a depression, our country is poised to spring into a new era of financial prosperity!

We know that this is so because we’re being told so by top economists, Wall Street bankers and others in the know. To put the icing on this happy economic cupcake, President Obama even interrupted his Martha’s Vineyard vacation late last month to announce that he was reappointing Ben Bernanke to a second term as chairman of the Federal Reserve banking system.

In our country’s high-flying financial circles, Ben is being hailed as “a monumental figure” for engineering the multitrillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street giants. Those giants are now claiming to be profitable again, and the Dow Jones average has begun to tick upward, so there’s joy in the upper stratosphere of our economy, and those who dwell there have blessed Bernanke’s ordainment as the high priest of America’s monetary policy.

And why wouldn’t they love him? After all, the compassionate Bernanke and other bailout officials allowed them to retain their high positions in the Wall Street hierarchy (despite their demonstrable ineptness, malfeasance and failure). So happy days are here again, and banking executives are now popping champagne corks and showering themselves with bonuses and perks — as if nothing unpleasant had happened in the past couple of years.

Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and other banking baronies have already set aside billions of dollars each to divie up at year’s end — bonus booty for their self-indulgent barons.

This is irrational exuberance at work, but — hey — a big bonus is the perfect psychotic sedative, making one’s irrationality seem normal.

Meanwhile, if you’re among the vast majority of Americans who do not reside at the top, chances are that you don’t measure economic recovery by Wall Street profitability, stock prices and executive bonanzas. A more relevant measure for you might the availability of good jobs. If so, good luck.

Since our present economic dive began (not long after Ben took the helm at the Fed, by the way), our economy has shed almost 7 million more jobs than it created. Indeed, there are fewer jobs available today than in 2000, even though about 12 million additional workers have entered the job market since then. While bankers are hoisting self-congratulatory flutes of Dom Perignon and giddily reverting to the irrational, grab-all-you-can ethic of executive pay, our country’s official jobless rate is headed beyond 10 percent.

Consequently, wages are down, household income has fallen in eight of the last 10 months and consumer spending is now nothing but wishful thinking. This is why workaday folks are less inclined than their Wall Street brothers to enshrine Bernanke’s “monumental” likeness on Mount Rushmore.

Well, say most politicos and pundits, even the job situation is improving. In July, they note, the unemployment rate dropped by one-tenth of one percent. What they did not note is that this speck of “good” news was not the happy result of more people getting jobs. Rather, the blip was caused by the fact that 450,000 Americans had become so discouraged by their months of fruitlessly searching for work that they simply gave up the hunt in July.

In statistical la-la land, you see, those who aren’t actively looking for jobs are not counted as unemployed.

Maybe they should take the advice recently suggested by The Onion: Get drunk. Just before Labor Day, this satirical newspaper’s lead story was headlined, “Nation’s Unemployment Outlook Improves Drastically After Fifth Beer.” According to the Onion’s parody, economists found that out-of-work people’s spirits perked up somewhere between the third and fourth beer, but the fifth brewski was when things turned really rosy for them.

Behind the official stats, the real jobless numbers are sobering. When you tally up the officially unemployed with discouraged workers and the underemployment (part-time workers who want full-time jobs), 19 percent of Americans — 30 million people — can’t find the work they need. This is our economy’s true crisis, and there can be no happy talk until we deal with it.

———

Columnist, national radio commentator, public speaker and author of the forthcoming book, Swim Against The Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow, Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be — consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses and just-plain-folks.

Copyright 2009 Creators.com

Dealing With Devils -The Lone Haranguer

Dealing With Devils

A black buck named Bradford got in a fight with his white girlfriend. She was one of those liberal idiots that had bought into the black equality lie and assumed that blacks had the same morals and spiritual integrity as whites.

She learned the hard way about liberal propaganda. The nigger killed her in a crack rage, wanting her paycheck to finance his habit. Then he tossed her in the bathtub and spent the rest of the night dismantling her like a frying chicken. He’d already had a niglet by her, and supposedly loved her, then he does this. This shows you the capacity for love these animals have.

He then took a pair of pliers and yanked out all her teeth, gouged out the eyes, stabbed the empty eye sockets and cut off the jaw. He used over twenty different knives to do the job. He scraped, cut, gouged, and mutilated the skull and other parts of the body as much as he could. You see, he was trying to make the body unidentifiable so the cops couldn’t trace it back to him. After all, the last thing this murderous coon wanted was to pay for his crimes.

Another one was recently caught in Tennessee after he strangled, then eviscerated a young girl because he was “pleasing his master Satan.” This buck had of course, converted to Islam and was wearing the standard pantyhose on the coconut head attire. It was all the white detectives could do not to kill him where he stood.

Two hos’ recently murdered a young mother and stole her car, so they could attend a rap concert. They left her infant on some stranger’s doorstep; a motherless orphan because these two maggots wanted to go party.

Our prisons are stuffed with criminal blacks. Half of the prisons in the country are operating in contempt of court for jamming sometimes three or four inmates to a cell designed for only one. But they have no choice. Politicians seldom approve money for new prisons because it’s an unpopular subject and doesn’t glean a lot of votes. And remember, it’s all about votes with those corrupt bastards. Prison riots are commonplace, as are murders, rapes and a whole range of inmate on inmate crimes. They’re crammed together in a small area with nothing to do but screw with each other.

These apes should be taken out and worked hard every day to earn their keep instead of laying up and watching TV, and stuffing their faces three times a day. Most of them eat far better in prison than they ever did on the outside. But the liberals and black caucuses, which exist only to screw with whitey and demand things they don’t deserve, start screaming bloody murder about racism the minute someone brings up the idea of working these worthless niggers.

If I had control of this country, I wouldn’t even be nice enough to work them. I’d exterminate the entire populations of many of our prisons, sparing only those with minor offenses. Those with career criminal backgrounds would get a bullet to prevent them from continuing their life of predation once they got released.

We have entirely too many black criminals on the loose in America as I write this. And they’re breeding as fast as their ho’s can pop them out. Like the mestizos, they mindlessly reproduce to have another excuse to siphon welfare money out of whitey.

So the problem mushrooms. We are hitting critical mass. Society can no longer sustain the vast and growing number of parasitic criminals that are overrunning this country. We’re dealing with devils, and something has to be done and done soon if we are to survive as a nation and a race. We are backed against a wall, and it’s either them or us.

Either way the system will collapse and very soon now. It will happen within the next few years unless we stop it. Either way there’s going to be blood spilled..a lot of it. The choice we have to make is whether it’s going to be theirs..or ours.

-The Lone Haranguer

The Near Future of America, the point of no return?

The Near Future of America, the way I see it.

http://www.rense.com/1.imagesH/tents_dees.jpg

Anyone with a brain can see that the nation is heading down a dark and dangerous path, our president is consolidating more power then any previous president, he has promised trillions of dollars in more spending, and has already spent more money then ALL previous president in the history of the United States.  The government is growing at break neck speed, and promises of increased social spending has put unpaid liabilities and current foreseeable debt at 100,000,000,000,000 plus dollars, with the Universal healthcare bill, the nation is at a point of NO return.
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Taxes have to go up hurting the consumer spending even further, with the economy is already on its knees, with housing taking a break and more foreclosures on the way next year, consumer spending at all time lows, and saving rates increasing among most Americans, we can be assured that the economy is not coming back next year, not in 5 years, probably not until the 2020’s.  Socialism and communism are on the march in the minority communities across this nation, national ethnic pride among Latinos is at an all time high and continuing to increase in size and political power in the southwest, ensuring the growth of secessionist movements among Latinos.  Blacks have gone to great lengths to enforce their anti-white agenda within the democrat party, affirmative action schools, banks, housing, cars, jobs, and even who lives and who dies.  Blacks have been targeting whites for every sort of crime on the books, rapes, murders, and robberies on the rise, black on white crime is growing, and with the internet, we all see who the victim is and why, we hear the racial remarks from blacks as they beat the white student on the school bus, or mug the white pedestrian walking down the street.  We have watched the documentaries on race in America, we see and hear the animosity from blacks expressed against white, for slavery, for drugs, for low income housing, for being white period.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 made official

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Observer/Pix/pictures/2009/3/28/1238249896758/Put-people-first-Thousand-005.jpghttp://www.nationalterroralert.com/images/civil_unrest.jpg

We are at a point where white Americans must evaluate their relationship with the United States government and its proxies.  Rest assured civil unrest is coming, street violence will increase, and protest marches will grow, white America has awaken to the threat.  We must understand why we see very few Asians, Latinos, and black participation in the tea parties, tax protests and other pro-American movements, because what is good for us is bad for their people, what is bad for us is good for their people.  Simple as that, Asians feel that these crackers might send them back home, their real home, Latinos don’t want to see white people assert our rights in our country, that might interfere with their take over, and blacks want whatever they can get for the years they were used as slave labor.  An awakening in the white consciousness will certainly lead to conflict with the other groups who occupy our nation.  We cannot embrace separatism, for then we would be surrounded on all sides by enemy peoples, we cannot take this nation back through the vote because they are breeding us out of house and home, no my brothers this conflict will start out cold, but surely as the rising sun, it will become hot.  Maybe a protest between anti-white Latinos and tea party groups carrying fire arms will turn deadly as Latinos throw rocks, maybe the local police will fire on pro-gun protests, only time will tell, but it will occur probably not this year, but definitely within the next few years.  Arm yourselves, stock pile guns and ammo you will need them.

Obamacare Unconstitutional

Locust:

An America Revolution is coming without a shadow of a doubt.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Obamacare Unconstitutional

Well, I have done it! I have read the entire text of proposed House Bill 3200: The Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009.

I studied it with particular emphasis from my area of expertise, constitutional law. I was frankly concerned that parts of the proposed law that were being discussed might be unconstitutional. What I found was far worse than what I had heard or expected.

To begin with, much of what has been said about the law and its implications is in fact true, despite what the Democrats and the media are saying. The law does provide for rationing of health care, particularly where senior citizens and other classes of citizens are involved, free health care for illegal immigrants, free abortion services, and probably forced participation in abortions by members of the medical profession.

The bill will also eventually force private insurance companies out of business and put everyone into a government run system. All decisions about personal health care will ultimately be made by federal bureaucrats and most of them will not be health care professionals. Hospital admissions, payments to physicians, and allocations of necessary medical devices will be strictly controlled.

However, as scary as all of that it, it just scratches the surface. In fact, I have concluded that this legislation really has no intention of providing affordable health care choices. Instead it is a convenient cover for the most massive transfer of power to the executive branch of government that has ever occurred, or even been contemplated. If this law, or a similar one, is adopted, major portions of the Constitution of the United States will effectively have been destroyed.

The first thing to go will be the masterfully crafted balance of power between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the U.S. government. The Congress will be transferring to the Obama administration authority in a number of different areas over the lives of the American people and the businesses they own. The irony is that the Congress doesn’t have any authority to legislate in most of those areas to begin with. I defy anyone to read the text of the U.S. Constitution and find any authority granted to the members of Congress to regulate health care.

This legislation also provides for access by the appointees of the Obama administration of all of your personal healthcare information, your personal financial information, and the information of your employer, physician, and hospital. All of this is a direct violation of the specific provisions of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution protecting against unreasonable searches and seizures.

You can also forget about the right to privacy. That will have been legislated into oblivion regardless of what the 3rd and 4th Amendments may provide.

If you decide not to have healthcare insurance or if you have private insurance that is not deemed acceptable to the “Health Choices Administrator” appointed by Obama there will be a tax imposed on you. It is called a tax instead of a fine because of the intent to avoid application of the due process clause of the 5th Amendment. However, that doesn’t work because since there is nothing in the law that allows you to contest or appeal the imposition of the tax, it is definitely depriving someone of property without the due process of law.

So, there are three of those pesky amendments that the far left hate so much out the original ten in the Bill of Rights that are effectively nullified by this law. It doesn’t stop there, though.

The 9th Amendment that provides: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” The 10th Amendment states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are preserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Under the provisions of this piece of Congressional handiwork neither the people nor the states are going to have any rights or powers at all in many areas that once were theirs to control.

I could write many more pages about this legislation, but I think you get the idea. This is not about health care; it is about seizing power and limiting rights.

Article 6 of the Constitution requires the members of both houses of Congress to “be bound by oath or affirmation” to support the Constitution. If I was a member of Congress I would not be able to vote for this legislation or anything like it without feeling I was violating that sacred oath or affirmation. If I voted for it anyway I would hope the American people would hold me accountable.

-Michael Connelly
Constitutional Law Instructor
Carrollton, Texas

FAIR On The SPLC: Nice Guys Get Smeared Some More

FAIR On The SPLC: Nice Guys Get Smeared Some More

By Patrick Cleburne

They are cowering in the Bunker down in Montgomery, Alabama this last weekend. The Federation for Immigration Reform (FAIR) has released its devastating counter attack on the Southern Poverty Law Center, for its smearing of them as a Hate Group.

Well, not exactly,

A Guide to Understanding the Tactics of the Southern Poverty Law Center in the Immigration Debate [PDF] is worth reading, or at least knowing about…I suppose. It is curiously hard to find on FAIR’s elaborate web site but it does appear on President Dan Stein’s Dan Stein Report, from which I gather it was published this past Friday.

A Guide to Understanding etc. is, like all FAIR’s work, expensively produced, earnest, verbose, a little wonkish, all too plainly chewed over by lawyers. Compared to VDARE.COM’s distinctly more direct polemical style, it appears (if I may say so) rather dull and even ineffectual—a considerable achievement, given the topic. Maybe this is the reason it took FAIR 29 years to become enough of a nuisance to the Left for the $PLC to name it a hate group. Here at VDARE.com, we achieved the honor in less than five!

A Guide… is apparently intended as a briefing book for journalists. As such, it is professionally and technically very odd—particularly to one used to being brutally harassed by Peter Brimelow for accessible documentation. There are very few footnotes citing sources, and only one hyperlink. Nowadays virtually all journalists will be reading in electronic form. It is technically easy to insert hyperlinks into PDF  documents—for example, all the footnotes in the PDF version of Steve Sailer’s Obama biography America’s Half-Blood Prince are viewable in this way. And journalists are all are anxious to see sources—especially in this bitterly contested area. Why not make life easy for this hardworking/bone idle profession?

For me as a student of the SPLC/$PLC, the most valuable element in the report was the discovery in the section What do Journalists Think of the SPLC? (Pp9—14) that Alexander Cockburn attacked the $PLC earlier this year in The Nation, which I had missed: King of the Hate Business, April 29 2009 (alternative link here):

“The sun is dipping low in the evening sky over the Republican Party…It’s…horrible news for people who raise money and make money selling the notion that there’s a right resurgence out there in the hinterland with legions of haters ready to march down Main Street draped in Klan robes, a copy of Mein Kampf tucked under one arm and a Bible under the other…What is the archsalesman of hatemongering, Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center, going to do now

(VDARE.COM links).

This is not vintage Cockburn, being mainly an update of JoAnn Wypijewski’s genuinely devastating discussions of the $PLC in The Nation in 2000 and 2001. But is at least a succinct and witty summary—for example, Cockburn writes:

“I’m a hate group, meaning in Dees-speak, ‘one with beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people,’ starting with Dick Cheney.

Other than that, the items cited in the section are all familiar. None are linked but all the links can be found in my April 8 VDARE.COM article on the $PLC’s finances.

The most value-added (from sadly, a low base) occurs Pp 15-17: The SPLC Manipulates Hate Crime Data to Fuel Their Cause.

This points out

“The base year that the SPLC uses to index increases in anti-Hispanic hate crimes, 2003, was one of lowest years on record for hate crimes against Hispanics…Consequently, any increase in the number of such crime appears larger when expressed statistically.

And more interestingly

As

The Police Chief Magazine reports in its April 2004 edition, ‘Once a department begins to actively investigate hate crimes and demonstrate aggressive action, the number of incidents reported to the police will most likely increase. This is to be expected and is not necessarily reflective of sudden increase in the community’s frequency of hate crimes…The fact that the number of reported incidents increases does not necessarily mean the actual number of incidents of hate crimes has increased. ‘”

The reference cited for this is inadequate—the URL of Police Chief Magazine‘s front page—and not live, which means you can’t even click on it in the PDF. I supply it here: Law Enforcement Must Take Lead on Hate Crimes, By Karen L. Bune, April 2004.

FAIR’s document spends a good deal of time asserting plaintively that FAIR is too nice! And that it is mean of the nasty SPLC to say otherwise!

In doing so, it makes a telling concession (on P4):

“FAIR condemns any individual or group that engages in hateful or violent behavior…”

Violence, OK—but what is “hateful”? In the Left’s eyes, all patriotic immigration activity is hateful. This is a dangerous and irresponsible concession.

From a debating point of view (and isn’t that what A Guide… is for?) a crippling omission is the failure of the report is to supply an up-to-date critique of the $PLC’s truly remarkable finances. This is a subject which usually excites the media. Furthermore the SPLC always attacks the economic base of its targets.

It is all very well for FAIR to assert (correctly) that

“The SPLC misrepresents itself as an advocate for victims of bigotry or racism. The organization does little or nothing to help the victims and instead lines its own pockets with the money that it raises or wins in legal settlements.” (P24)

But journalists need really good documentation of such a charge.

Here, FAIR runs into a problem. The most incisive work on this subject is on VDARE.com, by me: here and here and here. I have documented that the $PLC is basically a large and aggressive investment pool, linked to a much smaller, albeit well-remunerated, public interest law firm.

But, although we have always included FAIR in our links page, part of our policy of collegiality to all patriotic reform groups, it withdrew its reciprocal link to us (over our protests) years ago. We understand it feared being named as a “Hate Group”! Even the Stein Report, which is basically a collection of news stories, has not linked to a VDARE.COM story since late 2007—by an amazing coincidence, the point at which the $SPLC named FAIR itself a “Hate Group”!

But why should that be a problem? The raw data is all public. One of FAIR’s numerous employees could have been ordered to paraphrase the articles. Or Dan Stein could have picked up the phone to Peter Brimelow, whom he has known for years, promise for the umpteenth time to reciprocate links, and explain the need to plagiarize. Why would Brimelow have objected? And weakened an attack on a deadly enemy which is trying to destroy us all?

A Guide… finishes ringingly (P24-5)

“America needs an open and honest debate about immigration policy. Whatever position one takes on immigration, it is undeniably one of the most important public policy issues facing the nation. As with any other vital issue in a healthy democracy, free and open debate is essential to finding the right path for the nation. Blatant attempts to silence debate are unhealthy and must not be permitted to prevail.”

So true! Which is why it was so unfortunate that FAIR, along with other Beltway patriotic immigration groups, never uttered a peep earlier this summer when the Democrats were end-running opposition to get the so-called Matthew Shepherd Hate Crimes Bill through Congress—although Senator Feinstein directly said she looks for the legislation to curtail debate on immigration?

On Monday, the Washington Post took note of the immigration enthusiast organizations’ unmistakable strategic decision to smear immigration patriots out of respectable political discourse:

“In an ad published in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call and a teleconference with reporters planned later, America’s Voice, an umbrella group of immigrant advocate organizations, is accusing the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a prime lobby for reduced immigration, of leading xenophobic efforts to lower the number of Hispanic people in the United States.

” ‘The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) is designated a HATE GROUP by the Southern Poverty Law Center,’ the ad reads, citing a December 2007 listing by an independent group based in Montgomery, Ala., that monitors racist groups. ‘Extremist groups, like FAIR, shouldn’t write immigration policy,’ the ad concludes. [Immigration Overhaul Supporters Ratchet Up Rhetoric, by Spencer Hsu, September 14, 2009]

FAIR’s Dan Stein is quoted as saying plaintively that FAIR “stands four-square against discrimination based on race, ethnicity or religion, and we have a long track record… For whatever reason, they’ve [immigration enthusiasts] decided to participate in the destruction of the public square. I see it going on all sides now.”

In contrast, VDARE.COM’s official position is that you have to fight fire with fire. The issue is not whether immigration patriots are xenophobic: it is whether immigration enthusiasts are traitors—determined to destroy America as it existed in 1965.

We stand ready to testify that Dan Stein and his staff at FAIR—admittedly operating in the peculiar hothouse environment of the Beltway—are far too much gentlepersons to say such a horrible thing.

The Post’s Hsu made no mention of A Guide to Understanding the Tactics of the Southern Poverty Law Center in the Immigration Debate.

Big surprise.

Globalism vs. Americanism By Patrick J. Buchanan

Globalism vs. Americanism

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Down at the Chinese outlet store in Albany known as Wal-Mart, Chinese tires have so successfully undercut U.S.-made tires that the Cooper Tire factory in that south Georgia town had to shut down.

Twenty-one hundred Georgians lost their jobs.

The tale of Cooper Tire and what it portends is told in last week’s Washington Post by Peter Whoriskey. [As Cheaper Chinese Tires Roll In, Obama Faces an Early Trade Test, September 8, 2009]

How could tires made on the other side of the world, then shipped to Albany, be sold for less than tires made in Albany?

Here’s how.

At Cooper Tire, the wages were $18 to $21 per hour. In China, they are a fraction of that. The Albany factory is subject to U.S. health-and-safety, wage-and-hour and civil rights laws from which Chinese plants are exempt. Environmental standards had to be met at Cooper Tire or the plant would have been closed. Chinese factories are notorious polluters.

China won the competition because the 14th Amendment’s “equal protection of the laws” does not apply to the People’s Republic. While free trade laws grant China free and equal access to the U.S. market, China can pay workers wages and force them to work hours that would violate U.S. law, and China can operate plants whose health, safety and environmental standards would have their U.S. competitors shut down as public nuisances.

Beijing also manipulates its currency to keep export prices low and grants a rebate on its value-added tax on exports to the U.S.A., while imposing a value-added tax on goods coming from the U.S.A.

Thus did China, from 2004 to 2008, triple her share of the U.S. tire market from 5 percent to 17 percent and take down Cooper Tire of Albany.

But not to worry. Cooper Tire has seen the light and is now opening and acquiring plants in China, and sending Albany workers over to train the Chinese who took their jobs.

Welcome to 21st century America, where globalism has replaced patriotism as the civil religion of our corporate elites. As Thomas Jefferson reminded us, “Merchants have no country.”

What has this meant to the republic that was once the most self-sufficient and independent in all of history?

Since 2001, when George Bush took the oath, the United States has run $3.8 trillion in trade deficits in manufactured goods, more than twice the $1.68 trillion in trade deficits we ran for imported oil and gas.

Our trade deficit with China in manufactured goods alone, $1.58 trillion over those eight years, roughly equals the entire U.S. trade deficit for oil and gas.

U.S. politicians never cease to wail of the need for “energy independence.” But why is our dependence on the oil of Saudi Arabia, the Gulf, Nigeria, Canada, Mexico and Venezuela a greater concern than our dependence on a non-democratic rival great power for computers and vital components of our weapons systems and high-tech industries?

As Executive Director Auggie Tantillo of the American Manufacturing Trade Action Committee compellingly argues:

“Running a trade deficit for natural resources that the United States lacks is something that cannot be helped, but running a massive deficit in manmade products that America easily could produce itself is a choice—a poor choice that is bankrupting the country and responsible for the loss of millions of jobs.”

How many millions of jobs?

In the George W. Bush years, we lost 5.3 million manufacturing jobs, one-fourth to one-third of all we had in 2001.

And our dependence on China is growing.

Where Beijing was responsible for 60 percent of the U.S. trade deficit in manufactured goods in 2008, in the first six months of 2009, China accounted for 79 percent of our trade deficit in manufactured goods.

How can we end this dependency and begin building factories and creating jobs here, rather than deepening our dependency on a China that seeks to take our place in the sun? The same way Alexander Hamilton did, when we Americans produced almost nothing and were even more dependent on Great Britain than we are on China today.

Let us do unto our trading partners as they have done unto us.

As they rebate value-added taxes on exports to us, and impose a value-added tax on our exports to them, let us reciprocate. Impose a border tax equal to a VAT on all their goods entering the United States, and use the hundreds of billions to cut corporate taxes on all manufacturing done here in the United States.

Where they have tilted the playing field against us, let us tilt it back again. Transnational companies are as amoral as sharks. What is needed is simply to cut their profits from moving factories and jobs abroad and increase their profits for bringing them back to the U.S.A.

It’s not rocket science. Hamilton, James Madison and Abraham Lincoln all did it. Obama’s tariffs on Chinese tires are a good start.

COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Patrick J. Buchanan needs no introduction to VDARE.COM readers; his book State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, can be ordered from Amazon.com. His latest book is Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War”: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, reviewed here by Paul Craig Roberts.

Texas Sends Rangers to Mexican Border

Texas Sends Rangers to Mexican Border

More news stories on Immigration Law Enforcement

Michael Graczyk, AOL News, September 11, 2009

Special teams of Texas Rangers will be deployed to the Texas-Mexico border to deal with increasing violence because the federal government has failed to address growing problems there, Gov. Rick Perry said Thursday. “It is an expansive effort with the Rangers playing a more high-profile role than they’ve ever played before,” Perry said of the Department of Public Safety’s elite investigative unit.

The forces, dubbed “Ranger recon” teams, are the latest effort “to fill the gap that’s been left by the federal government’s ongoing failure to adequately secure our international border with Mexico,” he said.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry speaks at a news conference Thursday on border security. He has asked the federal government to send 1,000 troops to the Mexican border, but the request is being held up by questions about money and logistics.

The governor early this year asked Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano for 1,000 National Guard troops and renewed his call last month in a letter to President Barack Obama. The request is bogged down over who will pay for the troops and how they will be deployed.

{snip}

Perry said the effort also would focus on remote areas where farmers and ranchers have complained of being overrun by smugglers and gangs from Mexico in numbers that also overwhelm local law enforcement and border patrol officers.

“Washington is shortchanging them, not giving them the support they need,” Perry said. “As a result, we’re having to dedicate our resources to deal with the challenges we have along the Texas-Mexico border and ensuing issues that porous border has created all across state of Texas.”

He said the state would pick up the tab of $110 million, allocated by the Legislature in the past two sessions.

{snip}

Original article

(Posted on September 11, 2009)

Urban Law 101

Urban Law 101

More news stories on Racial Differences

Donald Williamson, American Renaissance, September 2003

I grew up in a suburb of a large northern city, and had no real contact with blacks until I became a lawyer. After I got my law degree I naïvely looked forward to a rewarding legal career. Little did I realize that 25 years later I would be a self-employed attorney doing domestic and civil litigation for a clientele that is overwhelmingly black.

I didn’t plan it that way. I just wanted to do a lot of work in the courtroom, and the best offer I got out of law school was with a small firm that specialized in bankruptcy. Most of its clients were black. Several years later, I set up an independent practice and many of my former clients came to me for domestic work.

Most people do not realize this, but outside the world of corporate or securities law, in any big city the legal profession is to a large degree fueled by the pathologies of blacks and other Third-World people. Of course, whites hire lawyers, but in any city, especially one with a good-sized black population, most of the people who need lawyers are black. In this respect, lawyers are like police officers or social workers—they rarely deal with ordinary white people.

To a large degree, I became racially conscious because of my black clients, who eventually destroyed all my preconceived notions about race. My awakening did not come from one or even a few incidents, but from the accumulation of thousands upon thousands of small interactions.

Day after day my clients continue to amaze me. There is no racial education quite so thorough and convincing as spending time with blacks, and my clients are far from being the poorest and least competent blacks. They are not indigent criminals for whom I am a court-appointed lawyer. They are people who can afford (or think they can afford) a lawyer to get a divorce, contest a custody judgment, beat a traffic ticket, etc. Some are government employees who make $60 to $70 thousand a year, yet even this group is vastly different from whites.

They Don’t Know

One of the most striking things about my black clients is the things they do not know. Many blacks, for example, do not know their own telephone numbers. They may think they do but they don’t, and the problem has gotten worse with the proliferation of cell phones. At least a third of the numbers they leave with my receptionist or on my answering machine are wrong numbers. Often, a potential client will call several times, each time leaving a variation of the same phone number. I keep calling until they get it right. At first I thought I was taking down the numbers incorrectly, but now I know better. With caller ID, it is clear when what the client says does not match the digital display.

Some callers don’t even leave a number. About a quarter of the messages blacks leave do not include either a name or a number. Needless to say, many calls are not returned.

More than a handful of blacks who have come to my office do not even know their own home address (they move often). Many cannot tell me their own spouse’s names. Now I know to tell clients ahead of time that they will need this sort of information when they come in. Otherwise, if I ask for someone’s address he may look hurt and say, “If I’d known you were going to ask me that I would have come prepared.”

Many black men know their children’s names but do not know how to spell them. With the proliferation of unusual names among blacks, I can only guess at how they are spelled. One client who told me he couldn’t spell his children’s names said I would need an encyclopedia to look them up. Many men have admitted to me they are not even sure how to pronounce their children’s names. Black woman, on the other hand, often become incensed if you mispronounce the very unusual names they have given their children.

The most unusual name I ever came across was Iisszzttadda. I have never met a person, white or black, who could pronounce it correctly. To my surprise the name is pronounced, “I seize the day.” Iisszzttadda had siblings named Raheem, Utopian, Desiorme, Sid-Timothy, Kizzma, and Larilaril. I have occasionally asked clients the reasons for such unusual names, but the most common answer is “I don’t know. It just sounded good.” This is the answer I got from a mother who named her child Latrine. (See sidebar below for actual names of blacks I have encountered in my practice.)

I once had a client in my office who did not know his own name. He had been called by his nickname for so long he couldn’t remember his given name. This is not as shocking as it sounds. Some black names, like Phe-anjoy or Quithreaun or JyesahJhnai, are so odd, it would be no surprise if they were never used and eventually forgotten.

Names are not the only things blacks do not know. Once when I was filling out a form for a female client I asked if she knew how old her husband was. She told me she didn’t know. I asked her the next question on the form, which was her husband’s birth date. Amazingly, she knew it—and was genuinely surprised when I told her she could figure out her husband’s age from his birth date.

When potential clients call for the first time, often the hardest part is to figure out why they are calling. Usually they begin in the middle of the story. If you let them, they will go on and on, and say nothing. Clients may call about papers they got in the mail, but never have the papers in front of them. They may call for information, but never have a pen or pencil ready to take it down. I have learned to ask direct questions: “What is your name?” “What is the problem?” If a client cannot tell me in three minutes or less what the problem is, I tell him to come to my office and bring a small retainer fee. That way at least I will have to listen to their ramblings only if they are prepared to pay.

Blacks with whom I have already spoken seem to think I should know instantly who they are when they telephone. After I get on the line, a typical conversation may go like this:

“Who am I speaking to?”

“I am your client.”

“I have many clients, can you tell me which one?”

“I am your divorce client.”

“Can you tell me your name?”

“Rufus.”

“Rufus, can you tell me your last name?”

The conversation may go on for some time before I finally figure out who is calling.

I do not take personal injury or product liability cases, but blacks are always asking about bringing suits of this kind: “My vacuum cleaner broke. Can you help me?”

Most of my clients who are not black either show up on time for appointments or call if they must reschedule. Amazing as this may seem, only about five percent of my black clients show up on time, and by that I mean within an hour of the appointed time. Only one in five show up on the appointed day. A few trickle in a day or two later. Most just never show up. Missing an appointment never embarrasses black people. They call repeatedly for new appointments, making four, five or even six appointments and then miss them all. I had one client who called more than 50 times before he finally came to my office. Rarely do I ever get a call from a black client canceling an appointment.

When I first started out as a lawyer I would call clients in advance to remind them of their appointments. They thanked me, but it made them no more likely to show up. Also, I used to call clients and potential clients who missed appointments, and try to have them reschedule. This did very little good. The most common response was, “Why are you calling me?” and it was never their fault that they didn’t show up. They had many different excuses, but I never heard, “I forgot,” or “I’m sorry I didn’t make it.”

Since appointments mean so little to my clients, I decide each day when I am available, and tell everyone to show up at the same time. On Saturday afternoons I can have as many as twenty appointments for the same time. Usually it is not a problem because few show up and even fewer show up on time. Only once in the last 20 years did everyone show up.

Many of my clients are unable to explain even the most basic facts. Often they must take the witness stand, and no matter how many times we have gone over the testimony in advance, I can be surprised by what they say. Some are simply lying and get tangled up in their lies, but most have such low IQs, they cannot describe even the simplest things. Often they seem to say the first thing that pops into their heads. When they are questioned further they cannot remember what they said previously.

I once had a client whose wife was suing him for child support. In discussions before trial he told me he had two children from a previous marriage. This was favorable for him because it meant he would probably owe his current wife less money. At trial, his wife testified that my client had no children outside of their marriage. When I asked him on the stand how many children he had before he married his current wife, he said he had none. Later I asked him why he had answered that way, when he told me before that he had two other children. “Did I say that?” he asked. I never found out which version was true.

Many of my clients have a hard time following simple directions. Once I appeared in traffic court with a client. In lieu of a conviction he was to see a traffic safety movie. The courtroom was on the second floor of the courthouse, and the traffic safety movie was shown on the first floor. The client was to come back to the courtroom with proof—which would be given him on the first floor—that he watched the movie. Both the judge and I explained this to the client. At the designated hour my client did not come back to the courtroom. Later that afternoon I got a call from the judge, who told me my client had completely misunderstood the instructions. He went to the nearest commercial movie house, saw a movie, and brought back his movie ticket stub.

Long ago I stopped asking my clients why they did something. It is not worth the effort. Most don’t know. The ones who know usually cannot give a coherent answer. Even if they can give a coherent answer, it usually changes every time you ask.

For example, one of my black divorce clients tried to hide assets from his spouse—this is not uncommon. Through discovery it came to light that he had secretly bought a piece of property after the divorce had begun. He put his wife’s name on the title, a very odd thing to do, since he was trying to hide the property from her. I made the mistake of asking him why he did that. True to my previous experiences, he could not give an answer that made sense.

Clients sometimes tell me they knew they were being cheated, but signed the papers anyway. I have given up asking why they signed, because I know I will not get an intelligible answer.

My clients make mistakes in written and spoken English that are often comical. One client in a criminal case told me he was telling the truth, and was willing to take a “polyester test” to prove it. Another told me he desperately wanted to see me, and needed an appointment “between Tuesday and Wednesday.” One who bounced a check told me the problem was “insignificant funds” in his account. I have had clients who have “profiteering” plans at work, want an “uncontestable” divorce (or a “detested” divorce, or an “untested” divorce), had “insects” (incest) in the family, need an “annoyment” (annulment), want a free “flirtation” (consultation), ask about my “container” (retainer), want to “consultate” about a divorce, or had to meet with “media people” (mediation counselors). One man told me, “I own a car but it is not mine,” and one who was accused of indecent exposure insisted, “I didn’t take my stuff out of my pants.”

It took me some time to understand certain kinds of black slang. Within the first month of my independent practice a man called to ask if I could “put a suitcase on a cat.” After much inquiry I realized he wanted to know if I could file a law suit against someone. Within the week I got another call asking if I “did luggage.” Since I now knew about suitcases, I said yes, I do luggage.

I pride myself on doing good work for my clients, but I cannot remember even once being thanked or complimented by a black client. They do not observe even the most common courtesies. Also, with rare exceptions, blacks will never admit they made a mistake. When things go wrong, as they inevitably do, it is always someone else’s fault. The most common excuse blacks give is, “They are putting me through the changes.” I have yet to figure out exactly what that means.

Most people tell lies because they think a lie will help them. I have come to the conclusion that most of my clients cannot distinguish between a plausible lie and a wild fairy tale. They are convinced people will believe anything they say. Clients often tell me some fantastic story I cannot possibly defend in court. If I tell them what they are saying is unbelievable the usual reaction is anger and screaming. Typically, they will add, “I’m paying you. You have to believe what I say.”

Sometimes, despite my warnings, clients will get on the stand and tell obvious, outright lies. The judge may interrupt the testimony and tell me to go outside with my client to “get your story straight.” They are not going to sit in court and listen to fairy tales. I take my client outside and tell him he has got to tell the truth, or at least say something believable. My client then starts screaming. “Why are you talking to me this way? You’re supposed to be on my side.”

I once had a client testify about his assets in a divorce case, in which the court was to determine whether he should pay his estranged wife temporary support. My client was a store-front preacher, and testified that he lived in the marital residence with his wife, though in separate quarters. His wife testified that he was out living with his “ho.” My client went on and on about how this was impossible because he was a Man of God. I thought he was lying. The judge ruled that if my client was living with his wife he should share household expenses, which he was not currently paying. At this point, my client realized there was a cost to pretending to be a Man of God living with his lawful wife, and changed his tune. “Judge why are you believing me?” he said. “Believe my wife. I am nothing but an old lying nigger.” No one in the courtroom could stop laughing.

Outside Kids

“Outside kid” cases are one of my specialties. For those not in the know, blacks call any child born out of wedlock an outside kid. Black men are good at making children but not at supporting them, and this can be a terrible burden under laws written with white people in mind.

In my state, the parent who does not have custody—almost always the father—pays a percentage of net income to the parent with custody—almost always the mother. The mother gets 20 percent of the father’s net income for the first child, 25 percent for two children, and up to 50 percent for five or more children. What if a man has children by several women? Each mother gets 20 percent for the first child, so a man with five children by five different women is supposed to be paying 100 percent of his income in child support. I once had a client who had 12 different children by 10 different women. Theoretically, he owed 250 percent of his income. These laws simply don’t make sense for blacks. Judges have to decide each case as best they can.

Not surprisingly, the average black client will not pay child support unless it is deducted from his paycheck. Many refuse to work, or leave a job to avoid paying. Job turnover is very high among blacks, and the court system has a hard time keeping up with them. Some blacks quit on purpose, and move to another job so as to keep one step ahead of the collections.

Whenever I ask a potential client whether he has paid court-ordered child support he will almost invariably answer with one or more of the following: “I always helps my kids.” “I gives the mother money whenever she asks.” “I am always there for my kids.” “I buys my kids whatever they needs.” It almost always turns out they have paid no support, haven’t seen their children in years, and at best may have paid for some basketball shoes.

Children do not always seem to have the same importance for blacks that they do for whites. I was in bankruptcy court once waiting for my client’s case to be called. A black debtor—not my client—was before the judge trying to convince him to approve his bankruptcy repayment plan. The judge told him he could not afford both his Cadillac and his children, and had to give up one or the other. The debtor immediately said he could not give up his car, and therefore the judge would have to take his kids. The judge threw up his hands and walked off the bench. On another occasion, the same bankruptcy judge told a black debtor he could not afford both his Cadillac and his house. The debtor replied, “You can live in your car but you can’t drive your house. Take my house.” This was many years ago and tastes in cars may have changed, but I learned how important Cadillacs were to blacks.

In one respect my job is very different from that of a policeman or social worker: I have to make sure I am paid. I try to get paid in full before I agree to represent a client. If I am not paid in full before the case is over I know I will never get any more money. Clients have a hard time understanding they are paying for an attorney’s time. Invariably, if a client drops a case before it is over he asks for a full refund. Their reasoning goes something like this: “I paid for a divorce and I didn’t get one, so I should get all my money back.”

Once I sued a client who didn’t pay me. I finally garnished his wages and was paid in full. About six months later he called to ask me to take his next case. I told him I didn’t want a client that doesn’t pay his bills. He became indignant. He said I got all my money, so what did I have to complain about.

To hear my clients tell it, banks are constantly “messing” with their checking accounts. At least that is what they tell me when their checks bounce. Most of my clients do not have checking accounts, and pay cash. The ones who do have accounts have no idea how much money is in them. Many clients have written me checks on accounts that were closed.

Black clients yell and scream at me every day; I have learned that this is normal. They are like young children who don’t get their way. I usually ignore these outbursts, though screaming back at them is usually more effective. I have been threatened with physical violence only twice, and once I had to call the police to escort a client out of my office.

My experience is hardly unique. Most of the lawyers I know have practices similar to mine. Most lawyers therefore are racial realists even if they do not admit it openly. Their actions and comments are no different from mine. People who have daily contact with minorities, who know first-hand that there are racial differences, are likely to be the best prospects for any movement that promotes racial consciousness. They don’t like dealing with blacks, but that is simply part of the business. If they can’t take it anymore they get into some other line of work.

One lawyer I know moved to the country so he would have white clients. He had lived in the big city all his life, but was willing to pull up all his roots to get a different clientele.

Recently the supreme court in my state ruled that a lawyer can be disciplined for communications that racially denigrate litigants. For that reason I cannot write this article under my own name, much as I would like to. I must hide behind a pseudonym for fear of falling victim to our politically-correct supreme court.

Sidebar: Some Names of Blacks Encountered in My Practice

Aaja (pronounced Asia)
Acacia
Ajeenah
Akai
Aquanita
Aryan
White
Baleria
Barbertha
Callie (pronounced Kelly)
CaAndi
Chetiqua
Cloteal
Curly
Top
Darhies
Dayphine
Debrasharme
Derecio
Dertiteriesa
Dikueria & Dikuria (twins)
Dildree
Dishon
Dovanna
Duanita
Dyiamond
Dwendolyn
Effillyne
Elizabeth Taylor
Endrissa
Equandolyn
Esaw
Everage
Floyce
Franshawn
Ghia
Godzilla
Pimp
Ivier
Jartavious
JyesahJhnai
Keithen
Kentnilla
Lafondra
La,poo (yes, contains comma)
Latronia
Lemonjello & Orangejello (twins)
L’Tonya
Machoda
Nau-Quia
Mayima
Minute
Miquel
Nethel
Omnipotence
Ondra (pronounced André)
Ozro
Padraic
Pecola
Phe-anjoy
Precious
Unique
Queen
Esther
Quithreaun
Rincesetta
Sanja
Saranus
Shanieja
Sharicus
Shiquipa
SiJourna’i
Silquia
Sinetra
Summer Love
Termicka
Tequilla
Timphanie
Tryphenia
Tywana
Tzaddi & Tzavvi (twins)
Ulheric
Undlia
Undrea (pronounced André)
Wsam
Xiomara
XL
Yaw
Yuvodka
Sharice
Wilida
Zaquan
Zufan
Zyneene

Original article

(Posted on September 11, 2009)

Police: Hofstra Student Raped on Campus, 4 Arrested

Police: Hofstra Student Raped on Campus, 4 Arrested

More news stories on Crime

Bill Mason, Newsday, September 14, 2009

An 18-year-old Hofstra University student was raped on campus, police said Monday, and four of the five suspects, including another Hofstra student, were arrested and charged.

The suspect from Hofstra—Rondell Bedward, 21, of 578 E. 141 St., Apt. 1A, the Bronx—was charged with five counts of first-degree rape. Stalin Felipe, 19, of 3150 Kingsbridge Ave., Apt. 3F, Bronx, was charged with five counts of first-degree rape, and first-degree attempted criminal sexual act.

Jesus L. Ortiz, 19, of 4373 Katonah Ave., Bronx, was charged with five counts of first-degree rape, first-degree attempted criminal sexual act, and fourth-degree grand larceny. Kevin R. Taveras, 20, of 116 Lukens Ave., Brentwood, was charged with five counts of first-degree rape. Police are searching for a fifth suspect, officials said.

{snip}

suspects
Charged in the rape of a Hofstra student, left to right: Kevin R. Taveras, Rondell Bedward, Jesus L. Ortiz and Stalin Felipe.

Original article

Email Bill Mason at bill.mason@newsday.com.

(Posted on September 15, 2009)

Congressman Suggests People Will Don ‘White Hoods’ If Wilson Not Rebuked

Congressman Suggests People Will Don ‘White Hoods’ If Wilson Not Rebuked

More news stories on Bizarre Racism Charges

FOX News, September 15, 2009

Rep. Joe Wilson’s outburst last week is drawing new recriminations from his colleagues, with a member of the Congressional Black Caucus suggesting that a failure to rebuke the South Carolina Republican is tantamount to supporting the most blatant form of organized racism in American history.

In an obvious reference to the Ku Klux Klan, Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., said Tuesday that people will be putting on “white hoods and white uniforms again and riding through the countryside” if emerging racist attitudes, which he says were subtly supported by Wilson, are not rebuked. He said Wilson must be disciplined as an example.

The charged comments come as the House is preparing to take further action against Wilson. House Democratic leaders decided to formally discipline him Tuesday afternoon for jeering President Obama during last week’s joint session of Congress.

Wilson bellowed “You lie!” as Obama delivered his address.

{snip}

While he has been widely condemned by colleagues on both sides of the aisle for breaching protocol, some have gone a step further and accused Wilson of being racially motivated.

Johnson seemed to reference the protests held in Washington, D.C., on Saturday in making his claim. While many protesters were there to demonstrate against big government and federal over-spending, Johnson argued that a “fringe” element is motivated by race and that Wilson “winked” at that fringe with his behavior.

{snip}

The resolution is “privileged,” meaning whenever it is introduced the measure goes to the front of the legislative line. It is unclear who will call up the measure.

A “resolution of disapproval” is not one of the four forms of discipline typically meted out in the House. The most commonly used means of punishment are expulsion, censure, reprimand or fine.

For instance, in 1997, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was both reprimanded and fined for his book deal. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., was reprimanded in 1990 for ethical breaches tied to a male prostitute. Republicans tried to censure Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., in 2007 for comments he made on the House floor about President Bush. But Democrats voted to set aside that effort.

{snip}

Original article

(Posted on September 15, 2009)

President Obama, Race and the Unpatriotic Right

President Obama, Race and the Unpatriotic Right

More news stories on Barack Obama

Jeremy Levitt, Orlando Sentinel, September 15, 2009

The far right and its right-wing brethren’s most recent barrage of indignant and visceral attacks against President Barack Hussein Obama has led me to conclude that the scourge of anti-Obama fanaticism is nothing more than foolish racism masquerading as patriotism and phony Christianity.

{snip}, the far right’s central strategy for helping America is to attempt to delegitimize Obama with trailer-park prowess.

Right-wing disdain for the first African-American president is primordially violent and expressed in dishonest, uninformed, racist and unpatriotic rhetoric and demonstration.

{snip}

Certain fanatical people and groups, not worthy of specific mention, recently toted guns at presidential town-hall meetings wearing menacing T-shirts that read: “It is time to water the tree of liberty.”

This was a symbolically threatening parity [sic] of Thomas Jefferson’s celebrated call for vigilance: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of tyrants and patriots.” Regrettably, this dangerously insolent and unpatriotic message was aimed at the leader of the Free World.

A patriot is one who loves, supports and defends his or her nation and loves its citizens, especially the U.S. president. {snip} A patriot honors the U.S. president, irrespective of his or her biases.

{snip}

As a close follower of presidential politics, I do not remember another time when an American president was so unpatriotically maligned by Americans, namely, right-wing politicians and media, and the millions of Joe and Judy plumbers who would disown Jesus if they knew he was African, and Obama if he were the Second Coming.

The truth remains that right-wing anti-Obama rhetoric around abortion, health care, education, gun control and foreign policy are cowardly coded smoke screens intended to mask fear and racism.

{snip}

Any American family that participates in the far-right campaign against President Obama by, for example, depriving their children of the opportunity to receive apolitical words of wisdom and encouragement from the president and leader of the free world, is unpatriotic.

Is it patriotic to stifle debate with right-wing anti-Obama propaganda when our nation stands in the balance between a broken economy, a controversial war on terrorism, a sick health-care system and an uneducated educational system? {snip}

{snip}

I would remind the far right what the Apostle Paul wrote, ” … there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.” Hence, Obama is the U.S. president and leader of the Free World because he was appointed by God.

{snip}

Jeremy Levitt is associate dean for International Programs and a distinguished professor of international law at Florida A&M University College of Law in Orlando.

levitt
Jeremy Levitt.

Original article

(Posted on September 15, 2009)

Judge Lets Victims’ Kin Sue S.F. Over Sanctuary

Judge Lets Victims’ Kin Sue S.F. Over Sanctuary

More news stories on Signs of Hope

Bob Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle, September 15, 2009

The family of a father and two sons who were slain in San Francisco last year can go to state court with a claim that the city is to blame for failing to turn their alleged killer over to immigration authorities when he was arrested earlier as a juvenile, a federal judge has ruled.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera had asked U.S. District Judge Susan Illston to rule on the claim herself after dismissing the rest of the suit last month by Tony Bologna’s widow and daughter. But Illston said Friday that the remainder of the family’s case—that the city’s negligence caused the killings—belongs in Superior Court because it is based on state law and challenges San Francisco’s policies.

Bologna, 48, and his sons Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16, were shot to death near their home in the Excelsior district in June 2008. Edwin Ramos, 22, is charged with murdering them.

Ramos, a native of El Salvador whom prosecutors describe as a member of the MS-13 gang, was arrested twice as a juvenile, for an assault in October 2003 and an attempted purse-snatching in April 2004. Juvenile courts sent him to a shelter after the first incident and to the city-run Log Cabin Ranch in the Peninsula hills after the second.

{snip}

Herrera’s office urged Illston to address the negligence claim as well, arguing that it was governed by the same legal standard: a requirement that the plaintiffs show city officials knew the Bolognas were in danger and had a duty to protect them.

But Matthew Davis, the family’s lawyer, said Monday that California law makes it easier to hold government officials accountable for allegedly harboring illegal immigrants or preventing police from reporting them to federal authorities.

[Editor’s Note: Earlier stories on the Bologna murders are listed here.]

Original article

Email Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com.

Message For Obongo

Message For Obongo

[Interesting whine from the wealthy elite who have been ruling us for so many generations. Obongo is doing the unthinkable. It was perfectly all right for previous presidents to destroy these people's race, but now he is seriously threatening their money, and that could have very interesting consequences indeed. - HAC]

Proctor and Gamble executive has a message to our President

Lou Pritchett is one of corporate America’s true living legends- an acclaimed author, dynamic teacher and one of the world’s highest rated speakers. Successful corporate executives everywhere recognize him as the foremost leader in change management. Lou changed the way America does business by creating an audacious concept that came to be known as “partnering.” Pritchett rose from soap salesman to vice-president, Sales And Customer Development for Proctor and Gamble over the course of 36 years.

*****************

Dear President Obama:

You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike any of the others, you truly scare me.

You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about you.

You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible means of support.

You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America, and culturally you are not an American.

You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.

You scare me because you have never had military experience, and thus don’t understand it at its core.

You scare me because you lack humility and class, always blaming others.

You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail.

You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the “blame America” vrowd and deliver this message abroad.

You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector.

You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one.

You scare me because you prefer windmills to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.

You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden eggs, which provides the highest standard of living in the world.

You scare me because you have begun to use extortion tactics against certain banks and corporations.

You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals.

You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view from intelligent people.

You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient.

You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.

You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the Limbaughs, Hannitys, O’Relllys and Becks who offer opposing, conservative points of view.

You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing.

Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.

-Lou Pritchett


http://www.northwestfront.org/

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