Monthly Notes

Briefly Noted: October 2015


The Democratic National Committee (DNC) officially endorsed the radical left-wing Black Lives Matter movement, which accuses police nationwide of systemic anti-black racism and brutality against African-American suspects. Approved by hundreds of delegates at the recent DNC meeting in Minneapolis, the resolution accuses American police of “extrajudicial killings of unarmed African American men, women and children.” It also states “the Democratic Party believes in the American Dream and the promise of liberty and justice for all, and we know that this dream is a nightmare for too many young people stripped of their dignity under the vestiges of slavery, Jim Crow and White Supremacy.…”

The statement was insufficiently extreme for the BLM movement, whose leaders quickly rejected it. In August the movement unveiled a list of policy proposals it claims will help to bring about “a world where the police don’t kill people.” DNC delegates approved the resolution on the same day a white sheriff’s deputy in Texas was shot to death allegedly by a black suspect in an unprovoked attack. The next day movement demonstrators marched near the Minnesota state fair chanting violent anti-police slogans and carrying signs reading “End White Supremacy.” Activists shouted “Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon,” while walking (protected by police) on a highway south of the fair grounds.

The historical illiterates at left-wing media outlet Vox recently tried to nail the NRA (National Rifle Association) with a “gotcha,” but it backfired. Founded by Ezra Klein, who conspired with 400 fellow journalists to favorably slant coverage of the Obama administration in the JournoList scandal of 2010, Vox promoted an article in social media about how way back in the 1930s National Rifle Association president Karl Frederick supported some restrictions on gun ownership. But Vox displayed an old NRA poster, that is, a poster from the National Recovery Administration, the Depression-era agency. “Vox’s social media team either didn’t notice the poster’s text referring to “cocoa and chocolate manufacturing,” or it simply didn’t occur to them that these foodstuffs have nothing to do with firearms or the Second Amendment,” T. Becket Adams observed in the Washington Examiner. “Launched in 2014, the so-called ‘explainer’ website has become infamous for the sheer volume of corrections and retractions that appear weekly in its stories.” Klein, an MSNBC on-air personality, previously described the U.S. Constitution as “confusing because it was written more than 100 years ago.”

Non-citizens in the U.S. are heavily reliant on welfare programs, according to a new study. “Legal immigration is supposed to benefit the country, yet so many legal immigrants are not able to support themselves or their children,” according to Steven Camarota, director of research at the respected nonpartisan Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). Of legal immigrant households with children, 72 percent access one or more welfare programs, compared to 52 percent of native households. Of households headed by illegal aliens, 62 percent used one or more welfare programs in 2012, compared to 30 percent of native households. Around 49 percent of households headed by lawfully present aliens used one or more welfare programs in 2012, versus 30 percent of households headed by natives, the report states.

Since 2000 the United States has fallen from being ranked second worldwide in economic freedom to the 16th slot today, according to the Fraser Institute’s annual Human Freedom Index. The U.S. collapse accelerated in 2010, the second year of the Obama administration. The report identifies the top 10 economically free countries as Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, Mauritius, Jordan, Ireland, Canada, and tied in 10th place United Kingdom and Chile.

Fred McMahon, Dr. Michael A. Walker Research Chair in Economic Freedom at the Vancouver, B.C.-based Fraser Institute, said, “A weakened rule of law, the so-called wars on terrorism and drugs, and a confused regulatory environment have helped erode economic freedom in the United States, which remains behind Canada and other more economically free countries such as Qatar, Jordan and the U.A.E.” The index examines 42 variables and looked at 157 countries based on “size of government, legal structure and security of property rights, access to sound money, freedom to trade internationally, and regulation of credit, labor and business.”

Although Washington, D.C., may be fiscally porcine, it is the fittest city in America, according to rankings released by the American College of Sports Medicine and the Anthem Foundation. The rankings take into many factors, including obesity, consumption of fruits and vegetables, bike lanes, access to parks, tobacco use, and diabetes.

Matthew Vadum

The author of Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers (WND Books, 2011), Vadum, former senior vice president at CRC, writes and speaks widely…
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