Cobb

I just picked one example of what *not* to do (as I did state). "Culture of poverty?" That Prince C. guy's got you wound up.

I find it facinating that you can say "economics makes the community, not the other way around" and not realize that the republican/conservative economic policy is what's perpetuating ghettos in the first place.

Let me break this down into plain english.

The "somewhere north of 30 horrid percent" Black male unemployment rate leads to rising crime, more Black men in prison and other social ills I'm gonna assume you are against.

So that tells us that what we need to do is create more jobs.

But the problem comes with the conservative philosophy. By putting few to no limits on corporate global expansion, jobs, which would help the Black ghetto communities, end up in China, India, or the Third World, because of "cheap labor".

Well, maybe education is the answer? Get folks out of the ghettos by increasing education and then they won't need those "factory" jobs fleeing the country.

But the problem is that conservatives are in opposition to increased teacher pay, smaller class sizes, improvements in physical infrastructure, and anything else that might actually work in improving education.

So then maybe those Black folks need to go into business for themselves. Of course that's hard to do when you have a sub-standard education. Some try it. Mostly by drug dealing. Of course you would think a conservative would kinda see that as the American way, sell a product people want. But no. Conservatives hate "counter culture" so even smoking a joint deserves punishment. And to top it off they deny education benefits if you have any drug conviction – even for simple possession.

But all that works work out ok for conservatives. Prison is the only “social program” the they support anyway.

And I'm not really your enemy. I'm sure you want nothing but the best for our communities, but your philosophy leads to nothing but a perpetual torture chamber for the lower class in this country.

My philosophy is not stereotypical conservative philosophy. I join the Republican party specifically to correct it where it has gone wrong. Democrats haven't stopped the war on drugs in all these years.

I have no problem or qualms putting crooks behind bars and writing them off. I am, in all ways, looking to global standards. The war on drugs, fueled as it was by a culture war, was a huge mistake - but there's not going to be any recourse. What's done is done. It's not as if nobody knew a war was going on.

I agree with the idea of job creation, but I disagree that government can make work. Again, everybody knows what kinds of jobs are going to be happening in the US. The government is not your enemy in this (hmm am I overusing that word), but your neighbor who is willing to work cheaper.

The US poverty line is not an absolute poverty line. There are millions of Americans, in our internal Second Worlds who are surviving. There are relatively few (4000/year) who are literally starving. So we all have to face the simple reality that the more desparate man is going to work harder for less. I say let the desparate man work harder - don't try to lift all boats.

I beleive there is a legitimate question as to whether our economy works on all three levels, First World through Third. Our banking system favors middle class standards and up. It doesn't make sense that loans for 100 dollars charge 18%; the whole check cashing industry is a poison. The same goes for real-estate and health care.

But liberals must *absolutely must* start realistically dealing with class, instead of fronting with their egalitarian fakery, because no country's wealth is going to lift all boats. It simply doesn't work that way, and it never will. You can't force it. That means Wal-Mart employees get Wal-Mart benefits, not Nordstrom benefits, and if you try to monkey with the law to force it, Wal-mart goes overseas.

It's not as if poorer folks have a real choice, but thinkers ought to think about whether it is really more difficult to live on 10,000 a year in the United States or in Guatemala. If it is harder here, then policy needs to tend toward making the difference between here and Guatemala negligible with the aim of keeping jobs captive.

I don't want to hear "We can afford it." I don't see any black lower middle-class folks giving away money to 7 in a room South American immigrants. It simply doesn't work that way.