American Elephants

The jobs numbers for October are in and they are slightly encouraging, that is more people got hired than were expected. There were 271,000 new jobs, when the consensus expectation was only 183,000. Small improvements are exciting these days. Of course we don’t know what these jobs were, if they were all part-time fast food, not so good.  Long-term unemployment also increased, and only 62% of the labor force is actually working. Yet this is the best monthly report in a while.

White Americans have an  unemployment rate of 4.4 percent. Black Americans’ unemployment is 9.2 percent, 6.3 percent for Latinos, and 3.5 percent for Asians. There is obviously something to be said for Asian “tiger mothers” who demand that their children succeed in school.

Nobody likes to see the unemployment in the black community, and for black teenagers it is 25.6 percent, which means you have a lot of idle black teenagers. Another ugly statistic is that 72 percent of black children are born to unmarried mothers. There is a connection.

For the last year, a protest movement known as “Black Lives Matter” has topped the news. Triggered by the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.—the movement holds that the greatest threat facing young black men today are the police.  Yet over the past 45 years, per the CDC, police killings of blacks are down by 75 percent. What is increasing is the killing of police officers.

The number one, preventable cause of death among young black males is homicide— usually at the hands of other blacks.The number one cause of death of young white males is auto accidents.

It’s an election campaign year, so the Democratic National Committee had adopted a Black Lives Matter resolution that promotes the phony narrative that blacks remain the victims of racism, in the quest for votes. President Obama was once on the right track when he spoke out forcefully about the need for black fathers to be there to raise their sons to be good men.

In July, the president ordered “an initiative” that would address policing. Body cameras have been ordered, but most departments find it too expensive to outfit all their officers with body cameras. As the Black Lives Matter protests have heated up and more police are killed, police recruitment has dropped off sharply. Those who want to be policemen understand the risks, but believe the lives saved and communities protected make them worth it. Now, however, they seem to be saying “who needs that.”

In Eugene, Oregon, the federal government sued the police department because it would not consider non-citizens for the job of police officer. They agreed to pay a civil penalty and undergo federal monitoring for 3 years, in a settlement over allegations they violated anti-discrimination laws when hiring new police officers, by not hiring non-citizens.

President Obama is attempting to fundamentally redefine and mainstream criminal behavior by fast-tracking criminals’ federal employment applications, weakening criminal law penalties, and trafficking in get-out-of-jail-free cards for tens of thousands of imprisoned federal drug offenders.

Releasing prisoners because it’s not fair to keep them locked up for their crimes, defending lawless so-called sanctuary cities, and banning the metaphorical (and sometimes literal) criminal record box on job applications, are Obama’s goals.

It would seem to be the common misunderstanding of the Fox-Butterfield Effect which fails to grasp that when there are more men in prison and yet there is a drop in crime rates—that there’s a connection there.

“One of the things that I’ve consistently said as president is that I’m the president of all people,” Obama said Monday. “I am very proud that my presidency can help to galvanize and mobilize America on behalf of issues of racial disparity and racial injustice.”

The scheduled release of 6,112 allegedly non-violent drug offenders, the largest one-time release of federal inmates is unprecedented. The notion that federal prisons are filled with people incarcerated for smoking pot is false. These are in for dealing drugs, which some would consider a violent crime.

FBI Director James Comey said in a recent speech that when he was a prosecutor in Virginia:

The notion of a “non-violent” drug gang member would have elicited a tired laugh from a resident of Richmond’s worst neighborhoods. Because the entire trade was a plague of violence that strangled Richmond’s black neighborhoods. The lookouts, runners, mill-workers, enforcers, and dealers were all cut from the same suffocating cloth. Whether they pulled the trigger or not, those folks were killing the community.

The White House retainers freaked out when Comey warned of the “Ferguson effect” which has police failing to enforce the law or failing to defend themselves properly because they don’t want to be accused of racism. Thirty of the largest cities, including D.C. have seen homicides jump compared to last year. The head of the Drug Enforcement Agency joined in confirming “the Ferguson Effect.” Some of us might find Obama’s idea of filling the ranks of federal employees with former felons somewhat — amusing.

With the usual Democrat fondness for Orwellian euphemism, the Obama administration is now substituting the term “justice-involved youth” for  “juvenile delinquent.”  You can’t make this stuff up!