Posse Incitatus

Black History Month

Some Americans don't like Black History Month, and believe it’s just another example of African Americans being put on a pedestal and given special treatment.  Given the hardships and indignities blacks endured for so long in this nation, and the important contributions blacks have made to American culture, science, and arts, for example, I believe it is entirely appropriate to celebrate their achievements.  And heaven knows, blacks who were born into bad circumstances — poverty, wretched schools, gangs, crime, and broken homes — can definitely stand to have some pride and uplifting, encouraging thoughts coming their way.

Another reason I support Black History Month is because I believe too many Americans are ignorant of history, period.  Everyone can benefit by studying history.  It helps us realize where we’ve been, and gives us greater perspective on our current circumstances.  It instills in us a greater appreciation for our blessings, and yes, it can be highly inspirational.

It is my sincere hope that all Americans — not just blacks — will learn about the courageous and proud Tuskegee Airmen,  whose valiant efforts played a key role in support of the Allies in World War II, and the Black Warriors of the U.S. Army, 92nd Division, America’s first all-black infantry unit, who fought triumphantly against the Germans and Italians in the closing days of World War II.  Think about it: These courageous service men fought for a country that denied their full rights as human beings.  It would be 20 long years until the civil rights movement would start being codified into law.

Rather than devour the latest tabloid trash about some nefarious rapper or NBA star, I wish young African Americans would learn about men like Benjamin Banneker, the first black astronomer, who taught himself astronomy and advance mathematics.  He became so accomplished, he was able to accurately predict solar and lunar eclipses.  Thomas Jefferson was so impressed by Banneker’s mechanical and mathematical abilities, he recommended Banneker for the surveying team that laid out Washington, D.C.

Or how about Dr. Charles Richard Drew, who set up the first blood bank and performed important research in blood transfusions and blood storage.  And then there’s Otis Boykin, who invented one of the earliest resisters for use in the circuitry of computers, televisions, and radios.

The list goes on, and it goes without saying that those of us who love Motown music and appreciate the work of many other black artists, entertainers, scholars, actors, and writers, have had our lives greatly enriched.

Yes, it would do all of us some good to learn about significant black Americans who have played key roles in making this such a great country.  My thanks and appreciation go out to all such individuals.

The Will and Consent of the Governed

Today's health care summit turned out about as I had expected: The tone was reasonably civil, but as the day wore on, it was clear that frustration was setting in on both sides.  Major philosophical differences are difficult to resolve just by committing to find "common ground."

You and I can say we both love music, movies, and food. There's our common ground.  But if I say I love U2 and Pink Floyd, and you don't care for those two groups but really dig Jay-Z and Lady Ga Ga, well, those differences cannot be resolved.

And what if you loved "Titanic" but I think (as I do) that it was an over-the-top, fake-as-all-get-out piece of excrement?  The common ground doesn't mean much.

You get my drift.

And so it goes with health care.  Major differences in the role of government, an understanding of how markets work, respect for capitalism, and adherence to constitutional principles, represent unbridgeable gaps in the two sides' approaches.

A couple days ago I blogged on the filibuster and the need for a general public consensus on health care before major legislation is enacted.  It seems the Democrats just don't get it, as they seem determined to shove their misguided boondoggle down our throats.  This stems partly from ignorance of history and precedent, and partly from sheer hubris and condescension.

Today I read a stellar commentary by George Will that gets to the heart of the matter, and decided to share it with Posse readers who have not seen it.

In light of all of this "Party of No" claptrap from the left, my favorite part of Will's column is where he points out how often the Bill of Rights effectively says "no."

Enjoy.

Downsizing Detroit

About 60 years ago, Detroit had nearly 2 million residents, not including the suburbs.  Now, it has about 900,000.

Detroit's government, infrastructure and layout were set up for a city that no longer exists.  The tax base is too small to maintain its physical size.

In part because of sloppy and inept record-keeping and general mismanagement, the city government has failed to demolish thousands of abandoned, dilapidated and arson-torched homes and buildings.  Far too many Detroit neighborhoods are a post-apocalyptic wasteland — a haunting testimony of broken lives and a broken city.  Here  are  a few  examples.

Massive job losses are partly to blame.  The "Big Three" auto producers — GM, Ford, and Chrysler — controlled about 93 percent of the domestic car market back in the 1950s, and today it is in the neighborhood of 46 percent.  But foreign competition and lost manufacturing jobs cannot be blamed entirely for Detroit's pathologies.  The welfare state, a breakdown in the black family structure, miserable schools and corrupt, inept government are far more culpable.

Granted, Detroit has made good progress on rejuvenating its downtown area, which has a lot to offer.  But Motown has a LONG way to go in restoring neighborhoods and reforming schools.

The city's perpetual budget shortfalls make downsizing essential.  The cost of providing services to isolated residences that are cut off from more densely populated neighborhoods is high — more than Detroit can afford.  On many blocks, only one or two houses or businesses are surrounded by vacant lots and abandoned crack houses.

It does not make sense to maintain streets, sidewalks, water and sewer pipes, electrical lines, snow plow service, and police patrols in isolated, disjointed areas that are populated by a handful of homes and cut off from surrounding neighborhoods by a desolate wasteland.  It is a terrible waste of money.

In that light, Detroit's Office of Foreclosure Prevention and Response recently conducted a residential parcel survey to assess the city's housing stock and help planners formulate a downsizing strategy.  The potential savings from reducing land area, and thus, infrastructure and services, are tremendous.

It's good to know the city is at least attempting to do something, even though it will be a long, uphill slog.  Now, if only the brain-dead Detroit School Board would acknowledge its schools are hopelessly dysfunctional, and cooperate with Emergency Financial Director Robert Bobb, rather than be angry adversaries.

Decades of liberal policies, rotten-to-the-core politicians, and greedy, obstinate unions have wreaked havoc on Detroit.  It's way past time the city resolve to change its ways.

Crybaby Liberals

So America is "ungovernable," eh? That's the latest talking point from the left.  They are whining that a minority of Republican senators can, in their view, hold America hostage to a right-wing agenda.  Health care and cap-and-trade bombed; union card check legislation has floundered.  Liberals complain bitterly that many of the GOP senators represent states with just a fraction of the population represented by the 59 (formerly 60) Democrats.

This reminds me of when Al Gore supporters were pissing and moaning about the Electoral College because their guy won the popular vote but not the presidency.  "Why can't we just elect presidents based on the popular vote?" they wondered.

Both of these cases demonstrate a childish naivete and ignorance of history.  And both examples demonstrate again that emotion and feelings, rather than rational, logical thought, predominate in liberal noggins.

First, let's take the Senate.  The American system of government, with its checks and balances, presidential veto power, and the different types of representation in the two legislative chambers — one based on state population, the other evenly distributed across the board (two senators from each state), is designed to make passing legislation difficult.  It is set up in such a way that some kind of public consensus is required for major legislation to pass.  There generally cannot be a tyranny of the majority.

Think about it: Major, landmark legislation such as Social Security, Medicare, civil rights bills, and Reagan's watershed tax cuts of 1981, always attracts strong bipartisan support.  The Rube Goldberg health care bill, on the other hand, is opposed by millions of people on all points of the political spectrum.  Yet the arrogant, overbearing Democrats and their cult leader in the White House want to shove this fiasco down the American people's throats. No wonder we're acting ungovernable!

Then there's the Electoral College.  This one's really easy: If presidential elections were decided strictly by the popular vote, candidates could virtually ignore large swaths of the country.  They wouldn't have to campaign in North Dakota, Idaho, Montana, et al, nor would they need to be attentive to the needs of those states once they got elected. All they would have to do is barnstorm the heavy population centers of the East and West coasts, plus a few large cities in between — Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Detroit — and they could lock up an easy majority.

That's not what our Founding Fathers had in mind.  I certainly am grateful for their wisdom and foresight.

Now, as far as the "ungovernable" label, I return once again to Will Rogers' famous words: "I belong to no organized political party. I'm a Democrat."

Time to get your own troops in line, Harry & Nancy, and stop it with your childish whining.

A Truly Big Tent

A couple of developments at the recently concluded Conservative Political Action Committee powwow caught my eye:

1) Texas Congressman Ron Paul won the presidential straw poll.  Rep. Paul is an odd duck, but I greatly admire his staunch opposition to massive deficits, his dogged determination to take a meat-ax to the federal budget, and his desire to eliminate the income tax and IRS.  There's no doubt in my mind we could cut hundreds of billions of dollars in so many areas without really harming people or endangering national security.  But when it comes to foreign policy, Paul has a lot in common with hard-left kooks.  He has steadily opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and seems a part of the "Blame America First" club, calling Americans "occupiers" in those two countries and essentially espousing the "we had it coming" attitude with regard to 9/11.  So it's somewhat surprising he won so much support from the C-PAC crowd.  Still, I am at a point where I'd almost be willing to put up with his radical foreign policy beliefs to get his domestic fiscal policies into gear.  For if we fail to quickly halt our reckless careening into fiscal insanity, we won't have a country to defend anymore.

2) Ryan Sorba of California Young Americans for Freedom was loudly booed when he criticized a pro-gay group that was in attendance.  Yes, you heard me right.  The motley gathering of Glenn Beck fans, Gingrich Republicans, Libertarians and tea partiers booed Sorba off the stage.  I am not pro-gay or anti-gay.  I am more of the libertarian bent when it comes to what consenting adults do behind closed doors.  But I do believe Republicans, libertarians, and conservatives -- i.e., those who generally favor smaller government, much lower deficits, and a restoration of sanity in government spending -- should not waste time or energy on so-called "family values."  I've always thought it was a farce that conservative Christians bought into the myth that GOP politicians are somehow far more moral than liberals.  Perhaps Republican politicians are less likely to live a libertine lifestyle than liberal Democrats and at least pay lip service to religious faith.  But putting your faith in politicians, expecting them to be morally upright Christians, is like trusting that the Detroit Lions will play in a Super Bowl sometime soon.  Ain't gonna happen.  It's just not in their nature.  Republican pols have just about as many extramarital affairs, financial scandals, divorce, and dysfunctional families as pols of other stripes.  After all, we are all human.

Like it or not, the GOP cannot expect to grow its base and become a permanent force in our demographically changing society by excluding gays and those who support gay rights.

Spartans in a skid

Ah for the hopeful days of January when my beloved Spartans were 9-0!

At first, I was afraid to post because I didn't want to jeopardize their streak.  I think we can now safely say that they are past jinxing.

This was supposed to be The Year, though the same was said about the football squad.

Still, March is just around the corner and if they can get a couple of games into the tournament, the year won't be a total loss.

House cleaning at the Posse

As the Posse nears its sixth year online, we're doing some cleaning up around the ranch.

The old Alliance of Free Blogs seems to have dissolved, so we've taken down its banner.

*moment of silence*

Similarly, a few of our Honorary Posse Members have vanished into the ether, so we're removing them from the rolls.

Anyone interested in joining the blog roll (and of course adding us to theirs) can send an email and we'll check you out.

The Posse has been somewhat silent on guns of late, and we're going to work on that.  There are a couple of inbound gun reviews we expect to have up shortly.

We will probably also devote a little more attention to Michigan issues, what with the Great Lake State facing across the board elections this year.

In short: stay tuned, we're in for a bumpy ride.

Operation Breaking Dawn

The Pentagon has decided to rename combat operations in Iraq.  Operation Iraqi Freedom will wrap in August and its successor, Operation Breaking Dawn, will begin Sept. 1.

Clearly the Pentagon has been reading too much Stephanie Myer.

What's that?  New Dawn?

Whoops.

For the record, I agree with Maguire:  Breaking Dawn works better.

Actually, this makes sense.  The military loves to divide its various campaigns into subsections for historical purposes.  The mission in Iraq has, over the past few years, changed considerably  from liberation to counterinsurgency to advisory assistance.

A new name is in line with this.  Operation Overlord was about the invasion of France.  Operation Cobra covered the Normandy Breakout.  Each campaign (or battle) was considered a separate honor, and I take this to mean that units rotating into Iraq after Sept. 1 will get a new streamer.

In a nuts-and-bolts sense, this creates an administrative headache.  Do veterans of Operation Breaking New Dawn get the same benefits as those of Operation Iraqi Freedom?  This will have to be spelled out.

There is a case to be made that they should not, since Iraq is now much less violent and US troops there are no longer supposed to be directly involved in combat.

At the same time, it's still a dangerous place and it won't take more than a couple of stories of combat-wounded veterans being denied their benefits to cause the DoD to cave.  For the record, I say they should be included.

In the larger picture, how Operation Iraqi Freedom end?  Was it a victory?  It's hard to argue that it was not.

Our troops are still there, guests of the duly elected and internationally recognized government.  No choppers were required to evacuate the embassy.  It looks a lot more like South Korea than South Vietnam.

The mission of removing a tyrant and strategic threat has been fully accomplished.  What the successor government does is rapidly leaving our power to control.

EXIT QUESTION: Is the administration's antipathy to things military and Iraq in particular enough to prevent it from claiming the victory?  Biden says "no," but he's in his own world.  Insofar as it is possible to predict this administration, expect them to be as inept as possible about whatever they do.

In the meantime, we can be grateful that despite opposition at home, hardship abroad and every reason to fail, our troops did their jobs and they did them well.

Those that lost their lives did not do so in vain.  Which, if you think about it, is what matters most of all.

Demagoguery in Detroit

Just when you think Detroit might finally be digging itself out of the deep, dark hole of corruption, mismanagement, crime, failed schools, self-defeating behaviors and racial tension, some idiot strikes another blow.

So-called "political consultant" Sam Riddle, involved in the dirty "pay-to-play" politics of the former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick administration, was charged with seven felonies, including conspiracy, interfering with commerce by extortion, bribery and making false statements.

The sludge and recycling contract scandal involving Synagro Technologies has already resulted in several high profile convictions including that of Monica Conyers, wife of U.S. Rep. John Conyers.  But on Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Avern Cohn declared a mistrial in the Riddle trial after one juror refused to convict him.

The Detroit News reports flight attendant Angela Woods of Auburn Hills, the only African American on the jury, told her fellow jurors she thought they were anxious to "hang the black man." She reportedly was belligerent when they wouldn't allow her to be the jury forewoman, and frequently clashed with them during six days of deliberations.

Nothing like picking at the scab of Detroit's long-frayed race relations. You'd think Ms. Woods would recognize that lowlife crooks on Detroit's city council and school board, as well as their unsavory associates, hurt her fellow African Americans.  Her brazen attempt to poke whites in the eye by voting against conviction is foolish, childish, short-sighted and a harmful example of demagoguery.

Detroit will never recover if this kind of idiocy continues.

Michigan's economic blizzard

A couple of weeks ago, the Posse commented on how the Obama Administration is steadily debasing its own currency of truthfulness.

Via the Hated Instapundit, we have found another example: Michigan's 109,000 phantom jobs.

A year ago, the Obama Administration was asserting that the stimulus would add 109,000 jobs in Michigan.  Since then, the state has been hammered, losing 162,000 more jobs.

The Blog Prof not only has the damning "What they said then/What they're saying now" quotes, he's got no less than three different sets of job numbers, all of which prove the White House wrong.

Thus once again we come to one of the core problems of the administration: No one believes a word they are saying.

This goes beyond "Bush lied/People died" or any of that nonsense.  Every public utterance, every official statement, everything pledge or promise - is worthless.

No one did that to the administration.  This is entirely self-inflicted.  A year ago, the president chose to make pie-in-the-sky promises and now they are haunting him and his party.

The simple fact is that Michigan has a bloated and unsustainable public sector.  It can no longer afford the lavish levels of government and public service it has enjoyed.  Raising taxes will simply hasten the departure of products and make further inroads into an already imploding economy.

A major part of the blame for that must rest on Gov. Jennifer Granholm.  Her legacy is eight years of indecision and recession.

One cannot find a governor in my lifetime so utterly incapable of the job.  John Engler, Jim Blanchard and Bill Milliken all knew how to get things done, and each had to cope with tough challenges.

None of them had a pliable state legislature, but all learned to work with the opposition.  Granholm never has.  With 750,000 jobs lost since she took office, her true legacy - reducing Michigan to the third rank of states in terms of individual wealth - may take decades to repair.

Instead of honestly facing up to the issues, she chose to campaign, to play on her popularity with the media and to avoid the tough decisions that might cost her union support.  Let us be clear: teachers' salaries are no longer a question of priorities but simply a question of money.  The state is going broke because its people are going broke.  Taking more of their money won't make them any better off.

We invest millions in educating our children and then they leave the state.

Of course, not all choose to leave.  Some - those trapped in the urban hellholes - recieve no education and merely go from the welfare rolls to the prison system.  I can think of no more callous, hateful and objectively racist policy than allowing Detroit's wasteful and nonfunctional public school system to exist.  If one wanted to purposefully harm tens of thousands of black children, one could not devise a better way to do it in plain sight.

It is clear that Granholm hoped that the stimulus would do the heavy lifting - that she could use to it balance the state budget and maybe boost the economy.  Between that and federal bailouts for GM and Chrysler, she no doubt figured that surely something would happen.

But the bailouts are nothing more than performing CPR on a week-old corpse.  The stimulus money is finite and swiftly swallowed by the insatiable hunger that is Michigan's public sector.

With a hostile and uncertain business climate, MIchigan shivers through its most hopeless winter since the 1930s.  Extended unemployment benefits are about to run out for thousands of workers who no doubt figured a "green job" was just around the corner.

At least Michigan can be thankful that inflation is a non-factor.  Oh wait...