We use cookies on our website to see how you interact with it. By accepting, you agree to our use of such cookies. Privacy Policy.
Settings
Accept
This web site is dedicated to the socioeconomic issues that specifically involve blacks in America. In that sense, its ultimate purpose is same as that of black lives matter movement, but its approach is more goal-oriented, educational, political and tactical, and not by protests and other aggressive tactics which create unintended opposition and hostility to the issues that really help blacks socio-economically. Also, while the BLM is preferentially involved with police relations, this web site is concerned broadly with more than 10 major problems facing the “black nation”. We have the big picture in mind.
Senate and House candidates at both federal and state levels that support following black issues will get to place a web page with a 1000-word description of their candidacy and policies (a feature coming soon). Black voters, and those other voters who want to help blacks, who visit this web site will know who wants to improve the living conditions of blacks, irrespective of the party affiliation of the candidate. In other words, this is a non-partisan web site that highlights the needs of the black nation, not party platforms. The needs of the black nation are not the same as democratic or republican party platforms. The needs of blacks are discussed below.
Black status in the society: Blacks and Hispanics are “disadvantaged minorities” with average family incomes far less than that of whites. The average black family income is 82% of average white family income. The family wealth holdings of blacks similarly lag behind the white majority. But this is not true for “numerical minorities” like Japanese and Indian Americans, Lebanese Americans etc. whose average family income equals or exceeds that of whites. It appears that, to have a strife-free society, we should convert “disadvantaged minorities” to “numerical minorities”. Numerical minorities do not depend on the government. This reduces the tax burdens on the majority. Conversion to “numerical minority” is a lofty goal that is easier said than done but should be done on a priority basis to have strife-less society. The following multiple solutions will help reach that goal of parity between blacks and the rest of the country in socioeconomic and educational status.
1). Reform of progressive income taxes: Blacks need elimination of fed and state income taxes on all black income below $75,000 per year and replacement with a 5-10% sales tax split between fed and state governments. Rapid growth of the economy as a result of tax eliminations, plus revenues from the sales taxes on goods and services will more than offset the lost tax revenues for the governments at both state and federal level, so that the government beaurocrats should have no objection. The result of this policy is that low income American blacks will have more money to spend and they fully deserve it. The same goes for the white middle class and Hispanics with incomes above poverty level and below the $ 75,000 ceiling. After the revenues stabilize, we can raise the ceiling higher and higher till the entire lower middle class and the middle middle class have complete tax relief. At some future date, taxes on incomes of blacks between $130,00 and $ 200,00 per year, namely the upper middle class, will be reduced to create more spendable income for that group.
The rationale for the above policy is straightforward. It will put more money in the hands of blacks to spend and stimulate the economy. Experience shows that this is the only reliable way to stimulate the economy and create jobs. Any amount of government spending will not get good results as Presidents Bush and Obama have clearly shown. The economy is 5 times bigger than the government and is more important than the government because economic growth creates jobs for blacks. Growth in government creates paper pushing jobs. Secondly, tax cuts must start at the bottom and not at the top of income scales. Thirdly, the progressive income tax system, created after the 1913 tax amendment, is unfair to the middle- and low-income classes. In the progressive tax system, increasing incomes at even lower levels are associated with disproportionate increase in income taxes. For example, if person A earns $ 30,000 a year and person B earns $ 60,000 per year, B pays not twice but nearly three times the tax as A. Is that fair to person B, for after all, $ 60,000 is not considered a large income? However, those earning above $ 550,000 to millions or even billions of dollars per year have a flat tax and not progressive income tax for all the millions of incomes above around $ 550,000. This is grossly unfair to the citizens in the low- and middle-income groups. Almost all black families are in this group. The reason very rich people in the top 5% of earners get flat tax rates is that they give lot of money to the democratic party and also to the establishment in the Republican party. This is how the top 5% control the actions of the government against the interests of low income and middle-class blacks and for that matter also low-income whites and Hispanics. Since, the proposal cannot be applied only to blacks, low income and lower middle-class whites and Hispanics will also benefit from this tax elimination policy that we propose.
2). Growing the economy to create more black jobs: The above tax policy will raise the economic growth to over 4-5% per year and likely reduce the national debt due to economic growth and more tax revenues for the government. The purpose is to take the American economy to $ 40 trillion/year in record time to benefit those that are at the lower end of the earnings scales, namely, blacks and Hispanics. The majority whites and numerical minorities will also become more prosperous. This will reduce poverty and increase income and wealth of the middle class. Our goal is to reduce poverty from 15% to 1% because blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately over-represented in this group of Americans.
3). Education: What is TOPS movement & why should blacks support it?
The poor preparation of our black students within the public education system for the challenges of life is the major cause of black educational achievements and earning status languishing at the bottom of the ladder. They are graduating without essential skills. The public schools are a gigantic failure. The problem also affects children of middleclass white parents and Hispanic parents. As a solution for these groups, Professors Richard Vedder of Ohio and Venkat Challa of North Carolina have advocated Teacher-Owned Private Schools (TOPS) for over 20 years. Spending the highest per capita on education in the world we can definitely afford private schools by teachers.
We should close all bad public schools that are responsible for black, Hispanic and white children failing to get essential skills and replace them with teacher-owned private schools (TOPS) with ambitious curricula, content-rich education, high discipline, and intense competition for excellence and students. We will double teacher salaries instead of 3% pay raise and attract bright people into that profession. It is shameful how the government treats the middleclass parents and the teachers. TOPS is not merely school choice. It is much more than that. It is a movement to ultimately replace public education with private education which is already happening in many countries like India. Asian students perform in top order in international competitions in math and sciences whereas American students are in the mid-20s in final rankings.
Black employment and earnings have significantly improved in the short term under president Trump. But this is not the time to rest and he certainly doesn’t plan to. The society needs to bring black and Hispanic education and earnings on par with the majority in order to improve their housing and transportation, and drive down school dropout rates, as well as involvement with drugs and crime. In essence, we want to transform a disadvantaged minority into a numerical minority. Numerical minorities like Indian Americans, Jews, and Japanese Americans have equal or slightly higher average family incomes than the majority whites in this country. Their dependence on government subsidies is very very low. Many white people want this result for all minorities because that saves a lot of tax burden on the majority whites who shoulder a disproportionate share of this burden. But the US Congress is strife-driven, slow, timid and controlled by very rich people. Decades of giving bad quality public education to blacks is the fault of democrats and the leftist media that keeps giving them favorable, fawning, false exposure while sacrificing black advancement by not asking tough questions. Keeping blacks and Hispanics at the bottom of the societal ladder is the same as keeping a large pool of unskilled workers and is a form of slavery. Besides, it costs the white majority of the society trillions in dollars over the years for support services such as Medicaid and unemployment benefits which is unfair to them.
We believe that the TOPS movement will get widespread black and Hispanic support as well as support from white parents. We hope that all the churches will support the idea of private schools. The TOPS will start a new sector in the economy of teacher owned schools and contribute tax dollars to the government as well as employment opportunities to the workers at these schools. Government employees in the departments of education will be quickly absorbed into the TOPS to help educate our children and grandchildren.
4). Healthcare: No black should be without healthcare. We advocate the relatively inexpensive Provider Care-For-All-uninsured subjects in place of the communist slogans of Medicare-for-all and state Medicaid expansion both of which are expensive tax payer burdens and insurance programs for which there is not enough money in the system. Current private health insurances will not be affected. For those without current insurances, healthcare is provided and managed by expert provider panels in each state. Central and state beaurocratic involvement is eliminated or reduced to a minimum. The distant, uncaring, inefficient, out of touch administrative control of beaurocrats is abolished quickly. These workers will be moved to deliver healthcare instead of pushing papers and telling everybody what to do from DC or state capitals. In the state of NC there are approximately 600,000 people without insurance and one can assume that at least 13% of these are blacks. That is at least 78,000 blacks! For over 60 years the federal and state governments have done nothing to solve this problem. They have a very poor record and should exit from this problem as speedily as possible. Not-for-profit provider organizations with initial funding from governments can easily form and use a health share model to provide healthcare for all those who don’t have health insurance. The traditional Medicare, Medicaid and Indemnity insurance will not be affected, but a new private sector of healthcare will emerge from the implementation of this policy. Unfortunately, the establishments of neither democrat or republican parties are interested in solving this problem as the history over the past 60 years shows. For the record, our position is that Medicaid expansion schemes will still leave a lot of people uninsured, since that is the history in general of all government programs. These programs do not solve the problem in its entirety; they solve just a part of the problem. Obamacare did just that mainly because it was an expensive health insurance program and not a provider-managed healthcare program.
5). Environment and Energy: There are two new sources of income for black families, namely recycling and alternate fuel incomes: Black individuals, families, groups and larger communities can start to separate household and commercial waste into soil additives, paper, glass, plastic, cardboard, wood, and sell in bulk to large recycling companies while paying no income tax but a 5% federal and a 5% state sales tax. This is also called ‘No garbage policy’. Such entities will also produce alternate fuels such as alcohol, algal oils, hydrogen, natural gas etc. and make money. Without this tax incentive, all local, state and federal environmental cleaning, recycling and alternate energy programs to protect climate will be ineffective. Black people need incentive to combat climate change. Lecturing has done nothing in the past 20 years. Communist policies will fail due to lack of incentives to individuals. This is a combination of energy and environmental policies that will benefit blacks as a whole. We estimate that the America can produce up to 35% of the clean energy needs of the rest of the world. Lower energy prices lead to robust world economies. USA is at the top of the pyramid. Blacks should reap benefits from such initiatives. Depending on the government is good only for bare survival. The top 5% of earners, very rich people, control the government by paying for the campaigns of leadership of both parties, especially democrats. The public should know how it effects the behavior of politicians. The black nation should learn who makes them powerless to control the government. The BLM movement is totally unaware of this connection between the rich and the democrats which is the cause of the neglect of many black causes, including police brutality. The alliance between the rich and the politicians is called “fascism” and it will try its best to prevent middle-class black and white people to get extra incomes from recycling and home biofuel production. When the majority of population can earn money at home without actually going to “jobs” the economy will vastly improve and we can export energy to the rest of the world.
6). Term limits: The establishments of both parties at the state and federal levels are controlled by the top 5% of earners (=the rich) with their contributions. This has led over the years to governments that are relatively unresponsive to the needs of the ordinary Americans such as 60 million people without health insurance. Lack of term limits leads to lack of pressure on elected representatives to achieve the levels of success that we commonly see in private economy. This has caused more trouble for blacks than even racism. All blacks must be solidly behind the movement for term limits and reduction of legislative calendar to 4 months in a year. We need a government whose sole existence is to stimulate the economy which is 5 times bigger than the government and provides almost all the jobs for minorities. Our laws, rules and regulations are one way of eliminating competition, slowing down the economy and slow creation of new jobs.
In addition to term limits, we need to fund elections totally by the government so that primary challengers have a chance to unseat non-performing incumbents in both parties. We need voter booklets at the primary level that every voter should get. Today, the elections give an unfair advantage to incumbents. This creates wholly unnecessary lifelong careers in politics and arrogant disregard of the economy and real troubles of the middle class. If your election is assured every time, your empathy for the middle class evaporates. You live for making lucrative deals in foreign countries, some of which lead to terrible job losses for the American workers. The prime example is Joe Biden. Such examples occur in the GOP too.
7). Immigration: Blacks benefit by controlling southern border, because unskilled labor is used to compete with and depress the wages of ordinary Americans, including blacks and Hispanics. When whites take this position to protect the blacks and Hispanics, they are unfairly called racist. Controlling the number at the border (such as worker cards) is crucial for our own public, which pays the billions of dollars of benefits for illegal immigrants. Bringing in a large number of people who lack language, and trade skills and are at the mercy of employers is a form of racism and tantamount to new version of slavery. Those members of the Democratic party and Republican party who support porous borders are reflecting their Chambers of Commerce positions and positions of large and small employers who give them campaign contributions and these positions are against the good of the blacks.
8). Reparations: This is an emotionally charged issue and this web site will remain undecided because the people are undecided and a highly-significant number oppose it. Suffice to say, the main problems are determining which blacks qualify for reparations, and who pays for reparations. The only thing we know for sure is that the original slave owners were southern white democrats and some blacks were slave traders. If reparations have to be paid then the democratic party and its supporters must bear that burden. The Republican party did not exist for much of slavery period and was created in opposition to slavery and continues to maintain that policy. Republicans have been murdered by the KKK, considered a sidearm of the Democrat party. More recently, democratic governors have tried their best to stop desegregation on college campuses, George Wallace among them. This is a Democratic party problem, not that of Republicans. Slavery existed between 1619 and 1865, that is for 246 years and the Republican party was born in 1854 in opposition to slavery and its position was that according to the bible, all men were created equal. Eleven years after the birth of the GOP and a civil war the slaves were liberated in the democrat-dominated south. Jefferson Davis, a staunch racist, was the leader of Democrats in the south. The first day of their liberation is called Juneteenth and you can see Democrats marching in all these celebrations and trying to be visible to the television cameras of the media which makes a different narrative than what actually happened in history. Nevertheless, it is the position of this web site that Juneteenth should be a national holiday to celebrate the end of slavery by Abe Lincoln and his followers in the civilians and in the American Armed Forces of that time called Union soldiers.
9.) Police brutality vs police institutional racism and other policing issues for blacks. Link to five reforms needed in response to George Floyd protesters and BLM. Article by Lawrence J. McQuillan. Please Control Click on the following link to read the article. We heartily recommend that all BLM members be thoroughly familiar with it.
https://blog.independent.org/2020/06/10/what-the-george-floyd-protesters-should-demand/?omhide=true
A careful examination of news combined with statistics shows evidence of sporadic race-based police brutality and oppression of black lawbreakers and sometimes innocent blacks. It appears that this happens more often in inner cities, dominated for decades by democrat power and rule like in Minneapolis and Atlanta where the mayors and police chiefs are routinely democrats. However, as statistics below show, there is no clear evidence of institutionalized racism in the police force. In fact, the numbers show that police actually kill more white people in violent incidents during apprehension of suspects. (Table below) The actual blame should be pointed at police procedures for apprehension and arrests which need urgent modification, many of which have the stamps of local and state democratic governments and police unions. The procedures appear to be archaic and also do not take into consideration newly available equipment like tranquilizer darts which are far less lethal. The involvement of the US Congress which receives lots of dollars from police unions can only make matters worse.
Table. Blacks Killed by police during violent interactions for years 2017 to 2020*
Total population = 320 million with >40 million blacks. *
_______________________________________________
2017 2018 2019 2020
Blacks 223 209 235 85
Whites 457 399 370 172
______________________________________________
*Data from Statistica.com *2020 data up to 6/5/2020.
While 50% of crimes are by blacks the above figures show only 1/3 of deaths are those of blacks. The other 2/3rds are whites who die in conflicts with the police. The figures actually show that police are less likely to kill blacks than whites during violent confrontations. Is this ‘systemic racism’ against whites? Probably not, it suggests white criminals are more aggressive or have more firearms during scuffles with police and therefore get harsher responses.
Black death rate at the hands of police is 1 in 170,212 black citizens. This is meaningful only if we compare to the number of blacks helped by the police in various ways which should be in the thousands. General non-availability of latter figures show how little police are appreciated by the entire society. Medical errors of various types cause a lot more deaths of blacks, probably a hundred times more. Should we defund the hospitals and lay off nurses and doctors?
We offer friendly advice to BLM and other involved organizations to carefully examine articles like the one whose link is given above. Before a solution is proposed its logical and factual basis should be generally agreed upon. Solutions like “Defund Police” are generalized responses to problems that are not generalized but are sporadic. As pointed above these problems are more and more common in big cities and their suburbs where democrats hold all the power and Republicans hold none. In cities like Chicago, blacks are killed in large numbers every year, almost always by other blacks and the democratic administrations have done nothing, mainly because they take black votes for granted. Blacks should give power to the other party and see if they can solve the problem. It is the opinion of this web site that unless 50% of congressional blacks be replaced by black Republicans or independents, the situation has no chance of improving. We suggest the following solutions as a starting point for improvements:
2. Each city should let their wards select and hire private police agencies whose field manuals are to their satisfaction. The city funds the positions from tax revenues, but citizens have a large say in how the matters are handled so that they and not the police will be responsible for incidents that involve the police officers that they have directly or indirectly selected.
3. Privileged immunity should no longer exist for violent actions of the police in which video and other evidence shows excessive, or unneeded force or racist basis. Privileged immunity for lawful enforcement actions should be protected.
4. All allegations of serious police misconduct should be investigated by an outside independent prosecutor who decides if criminal charges are filed.
5. Eliminate unnecessary laws that increase police violence. Current laws and regulations make a lot more people become criminals who should just have civil penalties and tickets for breaking an unnecessary law or statute.
6. The arrest procedures are archaic and need to be modernized and humanized.
Further reading on this issue:
“Lessons from Eric Garner’s Death and Cigarette Taxes,” by Lawrence J. McQuillan (Washington Times)
“Taking the Law Into Their Own Hands, In A Good Way,” by Lawrence J. McQuillan and Nathaniel J. Bennett (Washington Times)
“Bureaucrats Or Citizens: Who Should Control the Police?” by Lawrence J. McQuillan and Kelly R. Lester (The Daily Caller)
“Rise of Private Security is Citizen Response to Declining Police Service,” by Lawrence J. McQuillan and Adriana N. Vazquez (East Bay Times, Oakland, CA)
To Serve and Protect: Privatization and Community in Criminal Justice, by Bruce L. Benson
The Voluntary City: Choice, Community, and Civil Society, edited by David T. Beito, Peter Gordon, and Alexander T. Tabarrok
Privatization in Criminal Justice, by Bruce L. Benson
Private Policing in San Francisco, by Edward P. Stringham
Crime Control Through Private Enterprise, by Bruce L. Benson (The Independent Review)
The Benefits of Privatized Crime Control, by Bruce L. Benson
The Countervailing Trend to FBI Failure: A Return to Privatized Police Services, by Bruce L. Benson
Why Crime Declines, by Bruce L. Benson
Police Services: The Private Challenge, by Erwin Blackstone and Simon D. Hakim
The Militarization of U.S. Domestic Policing, by Christopher J. Coyne, Abigail R. Hall (The Independent Review)
Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces, by Radley Balko, Book Review by Anthony Gregory (The Independent Review)
Why the Disadvantaged Bear the Cost of Police Militarization, by Abigail R. Hall
Trading Places: Swapping the Roles of Police and Military Is Bad for the Republic, by Ivan Eland
SWAT Team Raids: Overkill Fit Only for a Police State, by Robert Higgs
From Welfare State to Police State, by Stephen Baskerville (The Independent Review)
Police Misconduct and Public Accountability, by Wendy McElroy
10). The biggest black problem is lack of political power: In the past 107 years, Democrats have wielded tremendous political power and this has not resulted in black earnings or wealth on par with remaining Americans. Black education in democrat controlled public schools is in shambles, and chronic unemployment and underemployment have made blacks over-represented in the American poor and in inmates of our jails. The solution? Unless the black Congressmen and women are 50% Republican (and 50% Democrat), and both halves of the black delegations work with each other to switch their vote at a moment’s notice they have no real political power. For example, the police in big cities have huge unions that give money to Democrats and prevent meaningful reforms of police procedures with black subjects during apprehension. Now, the Democrats take black congressional vote for granted and the Republicans have no access to black support, even though President Trump did a lot of things for blacks, more so than any other president in American history. Black civic leaders should stop this disastrous situation that was carefully planned during the times of Lyndon Johnson. They should re-designate which congressional district will have a black Republican representative and which will have black Democrat representatives. The congressional black caucus should be 50% Democrat and 50% Republican. That means game over. Neither side can control black votes and blacks will have true political clout. There will be no more need for violent youth displays and organizations like BLM will be more politically effective and peaceful. All this discussion means that there is no useful purpose in being blind followers of just one party, and party affiliation is more of an impediment to gaining political power. The moment blacks see themselves as an unaffiliated powerful voter block and more interested in shaping legislation from the beginning than being in one of the two parties, they will succeed in getting ahead. Politics is a game and the Democrats made sure blacks never learned to play this game well. They just bought 45 black congressmen and women and that was the end of black political clout. Sure, these congressmen and women are paid 200,000 dollars a piece but that is a small price for democrats to control political power. Blacks have sold themselves cheaply to their former slave-owners and slave-traders and have only themselves to blame for it.
11). Gentrification: Gentrification is the driving out of black home owners from their neighborhoods during real estate developments in those neighborhoods. It is the latest plague that involves our nation. It is the opinion of this web site that market solutions should be found and codified in local laws and regulations such that no more exploitation of blacks occurs. The federal government should pass a broad legislation that cities and towns where gentrification occurs will be liable in civil lawsuits by the displaced persons who are not given a new home in the neighborhood or who are not relocated to a neighborhood of their choice.
12). White privilege, white supremacy and white racism: These are inflammatory words used by the American left, mainly the democratic party, to win votes of black people. In reality there is only privilege of the rich, regardless of the race or skin color. Similarly there is no white supremacy, there is only white superiority in some walks of life, just as blacks are superior in sports and athletics. The white Americans have won the most number of Nobel prizes for any one group. So, what? Shall we spend more time in these useless discussions and arguments? Will that promote racial unity? Below is reality for blacks.
During Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s multiple terms, the New Deal institution FHA promoted racial covenants and other instruments of segregation through underwriting standards discouraging home loans in areas “infiltrated” by “inharmonious racial or nationality groups.” These were the democratic code words for blacks. The rationale was the government’s need to protect its investment, and those of white homeowners, against the threat African American neighbors would pose to property values (Richard Rothstein, “The color of Law”). Today democrat mayors are marching alongside BLM protestors and at the same time giving black people poor quality public education which keeps them unaware of history and learn who really practiced racism that continues to this day.
The ‘systemic racism’ a phrase that implies that ‘the white American people’ practiced it, was actually practiced by government agencies under Roosevelt. Contrast this with recent administrations like Trump, who successfully got enacted a criminal justice reform and opportunity zones for blacks. In addition, his economy reduced black unemployment to the lowest levels in over 60 years. The number of black deaths during violent interactions with the police steadily declined in 2017, 2018, 2019 and up to June 05, 2020. Yet, blacks are always told by our leftist news media that Trump is the evil anti-black President and FDR the ‘savior’ of blacks. The bad inner city conditions and repressive police procedures that BLM is protesting, were created during decades and decades of democratic power politics. It is unfortunate that the GOP has become progressively weak in the inner cities to the detriment of black citizens. Blacks must tell democrats to stop finger pointing at others and point their fingers at themselves. The BLM movement should protest people like FDR, Robert Byrd, the democratic senator who was a grandmarshall in the KKK, President Woodrow Wilson the segregationist and President Andrew Jackson who relocated native Indians in the 1838 'march of tears' . Perhaps they should demand removing the face of Andrew Jackson from the $ 20 bill.
__________________________________________________________
Donate and help run this web site!
Name on card:
Card number:
Expiration Date:
CVV code from back of the card:
Amount: (we suggest $5, $10 or $25)
Or
Send a check or money order to:
Black Issues 2020, ____ Hillsborough St, Raleigh, NC 27605
______________________________________________________
Necessary cookies
