Posted on 04/30/2015 7:55:10 AM PDT by Kaslin
Having lived in Baltimore for 13 years and working now as host of a daily radio show on WBAL, the biggest station in the state, I’ve seen first hand the destruction of the past week, and the past few years. Having grown up in Detroit, I’ve seen what lies further down the road my city is traveling, and it’s not pretty.
A who’s who of Maryland Democratic Party politics turned out for the funeral of Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old Baltimore man who died from a severed spinal cord injury that apparently occurred while in police custody. Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake was there, as was the woman she succeeded, Sheila Dixon. Congressmen Elijah Cummings and John Sarbanes were there, as was former Rep. Kweisi Mfume, a former president of the NAACP. The Obama administration even sent two representatives. While all in attendance mourned the loss of Gray, none were willing to address the real problem his short life exposes.
The death of Freddie Gray is a sad end to a sad life that involved everything you’d expect from a life lived in poverty in a major urban area. But his death, and his life, were the result of what far too many big cities are doing to (not for) their residents.
Freddie Gray was raised in poverty, educated in failing schools, thrust out into an economy choked by regulation and taxes, and offered only drugs as a way to earn money.
Baltimore has been controlled by Democrats since the 1960s. The economy, the education system, the business environment and climate of criminality are all pieces of what they built – a machine that churns out Freddie Grays en masse on an annual basis.
Freddie Gray was pushed through the failed Baltimore education system, learning nothing of practical use and not being prepared for college or a trade. He was thrown into an economy hemorrhaging jobs and businesses because taxes and regulations disincentivize the retention and creation of businesses. The only growth industry hiring was drugs.
Freddie Gray made his choices, but the progressive big government machine he was born into limited those choices.
That machine has churned out many of the people who took to the streets of Baltimore to riot on Monday. Many of them will suffer the same fate as Freddie Gray, though at the hands of their peers, not the police.
The answer pushed by progressives, all the way up to President Obama, is to make the machine bigger.
The president said Tuesday, “In communities where there are no fathers who can provide guidance to young men; communities where there’s no investment, and manufacturing has been stripped away; and drugs have flooded the community, and the drug industry ends up being the primary employer for a whole lot of folks — in those environments, if we think that we’re just going to send the police to do the dirty work of containing the problems that arise there without as a nation and as a society saying what can we do to change those communities, to help lift up those communities and give those kids opportunity, then we’re not going to solve this problem. And we’ll go through the same cycles of periodic conflicts between the police and communities and the occasional riots in the streets, and everybody will feign concern until it goes away, and then we go about our business as usual.”
These areas are represented almost exclusively by Democrats and have been for generations. Tax money is collected at whatever rate Democrats want to collect it, spent however Democrats want to spend it, and the rules governing people and businesses are whatever Democrats want them to be. “Business as usual,” as it is, is exactly what Democrats have made it. A bigger government boot on the neck of economic opportunity won’t solve the problem; it is the problem.
We’ve spent $20 trillion in the “war on poverty,” and we still have the same rate of poverty. Because that money was not spent to help those in poverty; it was spent on government bureaucrats to administer “benefits” to those in poverty.
Don’t get me wrong: Cutting a check would have been destructive too, but it is in the administering of those programs that we find the chains that hold people in poverty.
Like the tax code for taxpayers, if you live how the government approves, your “benefits” will continue. Stray from the approved life and they will be cut off. Get a job and you risk losing money you’ve been conditioned to rely on. Get married, forget it.
The president remains a dedicated ideologue to the progressive welfare state. He said, “And there’s a bunch of my agenda that would make a difference right now in that.” He listed early education for children in poverty as one of his “solutions.”
Additional years in the machine would not have saved Freddie Gray, and it will not save any child grinding through its gears. Liberation from that machine is the only hope.
Even if the machine freed kids from the education system and offered school choice, without wholesale dismantling of the progressive machine there will be no jobs awaiting even qualified and well-educated graduates.
In short, without an across-the-board rejection of the hollow promises of progressivism, Freddie Gray’s death will mean nothing. Electing new people to do the same things will yield the same results. It isn’t just the people, the politicians and their false promises of change, it’s the ideology they swear allegiance to.
The worst school districts in the country are controlled by teachers unions and overseen by progressive Democrats. They are also among the most expensive school districts in the country. More money would only make them more expensive, not better. Yet that is the “solution” being offered by progressive Democrats. That’s like the captain of the Titanic ordering his ship to speed up and hit the iceberg faster and thinking that would make it better.
Unfortunately for Baltimore, and every other major city looking down the barrel of the same fate, more of the same is the mostly likely plan. The only people who can rise up and make the changes in leadership necessary to restore liberty and the opportunity and dignity that come with it are products of the same machine that produced Freddie Gray and those who soiled his memory by looting armloads of toilet paper and beer from the few stores willing to serve their communities … even though those communities turn on them the moment the opportunity presents itself.
Baltimore needs as mayor the mother that took his son from the mob.
Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke: Obama ‘Quietly Enjoying’ Unrest in Baltimore
therightpundit ^ | 4/29/15
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3284576/posts
Not holding back one bit. Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke says O is “quietly enjoying” what’s going on in Baltimore because he’s a ‘promoter of division’ and has ‘benefitted politically’ from ‘dividing’ people.
Sheriff Clarke points out all the times President Obama has pitted one group of Americans against another. He also questions why Obama didn’t come out and speak about the Baltimore riots earlier. He was interviewed here on the Mark Levin Show
Clarke: Change In Baltimore Should Start With "Failed Liberal Democrat Policies"
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3284755/posts
Breitbart.com ^ | April 30,2015 | Ian Hanchett
Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke (D) blasted “failed liberal government policies” for miring people in cities like Baltimore in “generational poverty” and argued that change in Baltimore “needs to start in the politics, the failed liberal Democrat policies” on Wednesday’s “Hannity” on the Fox News Channel.
One by one, reporters, pundits, etc. are making that point.
BTW, is it just me or does it seem like Foxnews is trying to pour gasoline on the fire?
Brilliant article Mr. Hunter- The problem with Detroit and Baltimore is their dimmacrat governments. I agree.
Excellent point.
In Ferguson , we were told that those troubles were due to a white police force and white mayor/city council governing a mostly black town.
But in Baltimore, we have a black mayor, black chief of police, mostly black city council, and mostly black police force. So clearly, whatever problems they have there are not due to racism. Blacks control the power structure of Baltimore, and Democrats specifically have been in control for decades. So what’s the next excuse??
Completing your education, marrying before having children, staying married and working. These four things would eliminate a large part of poverty. This is what the government should subsidize. Not just the opposite.
**Freddie Gray made his choices, but the progressive big government machine he was born into limited those choices.**
A few years ago I had a Soldier from inner city Baltimore. He was knocking out all the college classes he could. I later wrote a letter of recommendation for him to go on to college on the Army’s dime, which led to him receiving a commission as a 2LT.
I had him in my office one day and asked how he get out. He told me that all of friends and male relatives were either dead or in jail. He saw the Army and the education it provided as the ticket out.
I have never been as proud to be a small part of someone’s life as I was his.
New York City is quickly heading down the same path. Chicago is already there. And, don’t get me started on Kalifornia, San Fran, in particular.
In 1964 I quit the Dept of Public Welfare as a caseworker because “the Department creates and sustains poverty. It does not overcome it.”
I realized then that the primary job of bureaucracy is to sustain itself and grow. When its existence is based upon the needs of people in the private sector those needs must be increased for the bureaucracy to meet its goals.
The fundamentals of public assistance are wrong. There is no possibility of overcoming need through public charity. Only private charity can bring people out of poverty.
“And there’s a bunch of my agenda that would make a difference right now in that.” He listed early education for children in poverty as one of his “solutions.”
Apparently he learned grammar in a government school.
>>The worst school districts in the country are controlled by teachers unions and overseen by progressive Democrats. They are also among the most expensive school districts in the country. More money would only make them more expensive, not better. Yet that is the “solution” being offered by progressive Democrats.
Try asking a Democrat how much money is needed to fix a problem. They can’t tell you. They will only tell you that they need more. They are bottomless pits of greed for tax money. That is because money can NOT fix the problem. The major function of money in these situations is to increase the power and control of Democrat control freak politicians.
Racism.
So wi,lll the Just Us dept force a change in Leadership in Baltimore- as they did ib Ferguson. /hvy sarc
The simplicity of this? A lead-paint disability guy gets a monthly check....arrested eighteen times mostly on drug-related charges...has asthma...is noted one morning in a drug sales transaction and runs...cops grab him and arrest him...gets tossed in the back of the van....no idea what drug he might have ingested (PCP?)....has some kind of fit in the back of the van while asking for inhaler for asthma....and throws head hard enough to break spinal cord.
Did I miss anything?
If you were looking for a martyr, Freddy is a one-star character when measuring up to bulk of martyrs.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.