Frighteningly, we aren’t making this up!

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2015

It came from the Washington Post:
This evening, monsters will rise from the deep.

Right on cue, a bit of prose arose this morning from the front page of the Washington Post. This passage comes from a profile of Ben Carson’s early years:
TANKERSLEY (10/31/15): Only 1 in 20 children born into deep poverty in Detroit will climb into the top quintile of income earners when she or he grows up, according to research by economists at Harvard, Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley. Barely 1 in 100 will rise, as Carson did, all the way to the top 1 percent.

By almost every conceivable metric, young Benjamin Carson defied the odds...
Barely 1 in 100 will rise to the top one percent! On this most frightening of all days, that monster came from the Post.

We’ve asked you this many times in the past:

Are these life forms human?

78 comments:

  1. Almost no marriages in which both partners work full time fall below the poverty line; about one-third of households headed by a single mother are poor. One in eight children with two married parents lives below the poverty line; five in 10 living with a single mother do. And income aside, children raised by two parents are less likely to have behavioral problems, be asthmatic or hungry; they are more likely to achieve at school and so on. The effects are perhaps even larger than researchers had previously grasped. In a new study, the economist Raj Chetty and his co-authors found that, in terms of income mobility, nothing matters more for a low-income child than the family structures she sees in her community — not neighborhood segregation, school quality or a host of other factors.

    Giving all this evidence some urgency is the fact that so many children are born out of wedlock today, and so many couples decide to divorce or not to marry at all. As Rubio pointed out, by now, about four in 10 children are born to an unmarried mother. For poor children, that proportion is higher.


    The low IQ progressive left would rather see everyone impoverished than hear the words "marriage and family" (impediments to finding bliss), the same way they would rather cause black kids to die than utter the words "Do what police, to whom civilized society has given authority to tell you what to do, tell you to do."

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    1. By this reasoning, when the economy worsens for lower income people, polygamy is the answer because almost no families with three workers will be below the poverty line.

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    2. Not all that long ago it took one income to raise a middle class family, now, it generally requires two full-time workers, if that. Decades of anti-labor/pro-corporate political action has done damage to both poor AND middle class families. You play the self-serving tribal fool to suggest your ilk has a monopoly on "marriage and family" or "family values".

      Agreed, across the board, people shouldn't have kids they can't afford, and who don't have a full commitment to supporting and raising.

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    3. Once you have kids, what is to prevent illness or recession from undermining your means of support? These people seem to always assume people are having kids irresponsible, never that life circumstances prevent them from maintaining the same income throughout their kids lives. You cannot forego having a family on the chance that disaster will happen. If you take the risk and do have kids, why are you blamed when your employer closes your workplace, you develop MS or ALS or cancer, or you are in the path of a 500-year flood? This reasoning sucks.

      It used to be that people dealt with disasters precisely by having lots of kids, because more hands meant more chance to stay afloat. People who adopt that strategy are being blamed for adopting a time-tested survival method as if the kids were the cause of the problems instead of the solution. When kids are pampered consumers, having too many seems irresponsible but when they help around the house or in a family business, or are a means of coping with harsh circumstances, they are not a liability but necessary to getting ahead. They provide that 3rd income, care for siblings so parents can work 2 jobs, do the cooking and cleaning to free parents for more work, care for aging relatives when there is no health care, and so on. Telling poor people not to have kids or blaming them for their kids makes no sense in real life.

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    4. "You cannot forego having a family on the chance that disaster will happen."

      Ah. There it is, folks. Progressive "thought." You cannot forego having a family until you're married and can reasonably expect to raise your children in something other than misery.

      Other progressives here insists the left does understand the importance of family values but there is no evidence this is true. They recoil at the phrase because it is an obstacle to "individualism."

      Progressives scream "RACISM" as their contribution to society instead of promoting anything rational, meaningful or effective.

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    5. I get it -- kids are only for rich people. Please tell us what income level someone must attain before being justified in having 1 child, how much more money must you have for 2? Shouldn't wealthy people be compelled to have dozens of kids, to make up for the very large number of poor people who will not have any? I think it is their duty. If someone cannot have kids, should they give their money to someone else so they can do it for them? How much money should one donate? A minimal amount or enough to attend Harvard? How miserable do you think kids in lower income families are? Sounds like you buy into materialism in a big way -- kids with fewer toys are no doubt much more miserable than those with lots of toys. Kids who go to a state university are miserable since they are not at Yale.

      Guess you never heard about all those best things in life that are free. My heart is gladdened by the large families, obviously not wealthy, who I see having picnics in our city parks. You probably consider them nuisances because they cannot afford Disneyland, out there running around without knowing how miserable they must be.

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    6. This is the kind of financial calculations seniors have to make when contemplating retirement. How much money must you save up in order to reasonably anticipate any kind of health problem you might develop -- or worse yet, living decades past your demographic due date? When the future is unpredictable, how do you cover all contingencies?

      How much more difficult is it to anticipate all the contingencies of child rearing in middle adulthood? But responsible people are somehow supposed to figure that out. Seniors approach this in two ways: (1) they give up and save nothing, (2) they save every penny, even long after they have a reasonable amount, becoming frugal to the point of miserliness and spending nothing after retirement because they might need that money later. If you don't adopt strategy (2), you are being irresponsible and may need help from your kids or others (such as the public).

      People do not get by through miserliness or extreme self-sufficiency. They get by through helping each other, as families but also as neighborhoods, communities, commonwealths and nations. Progressives see government as the extension of communal interdependency. I think conservatives (as especially libertarians) don't like their neighbors very much, so they evade their responsibility to others by being philosophical misers. They defend against those in need by saying "you should have planned for this rainy day instead of fiddling while the ants worked." But they say this to ants, not just grasshoppers, because they are Grinch-like at heart. Mine, mine, mine they screech as they clutch their dollars to their chests, hurrying to bar the door against all those greedy children who will be shouting "Trick or treat" tonight. Their parents should buy them candy, if they weren't being irresponsible.

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    7. . Please tell us what income level someone must attain before being justified in having 1 child, how much more money must you have for 2?

      Enough to feed, clothe, house them and provide the stability of both their parents in their household contributing to their economic and psychological welfare throughout their lives.

      A 75% illegitimacy rate fails them not to mention the rest of society and their children.

      Too much to ask an ethically lazy progressive who cannot stomach the idea of such a demanding social expectation no matter the cost in human misery.

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    8. hurrying to bar the door against all those greedy children who will be shouting "Trick or treat" tonight.

      Who still Trick or Treats? Negligent parents whose "unarmed teens" menace other people's children have put an end to that tradition.

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    9. Telling poor people not to have kids or blaming them for their kids makes no sense in real life.

      The model of "have more kids out of wedlock to stay afloat and create financial stability" is working fabulously.

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    10. What is your evidence that it is not working?

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    11. I love a big family picnic in the park. Especially if all the baby daddies are there, gainfully employed and dedicated to raising their kids.

      That's the key, if you can't support yourself, or, if you "don't like" work, can't handle it, or feel it's beneath you, then do everyone a favor, don't have kids!

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    12. Nobody "likes" minimum wage work. There is dignity in all labor, but many jobs have no intrinsic appeal beyond that. Expecting low-wage workers to love their jobs is a bit much.

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    13. There should be shame in not accepting minimum wage work if it is what keeps you and your family above water. Special snowflake mentality combined with lefty enabling has eliminated dignity in all facets of life and it's ugly, most of all for the doomed children of the excuse makers and deadbeats.

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    14. "That's the key, if you can't support yourself, or, if you "don't like" work, can't handle it, or feel it's beneath you, then do everyone a favor, don't have kids!"

      Don't knock sitting on the couch all day smoking weed while the government pays your baby mamas to support you til you've tried it. It's easy to get used to, especially when half the country made up of low IQ nitwits will say you're a deserving victim and call that progress.

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    15. 1:16,
      There's even less shame in working a job where your labor is compensated.
      It's not the people who won't work for minimum wage that's the problem, but rather it's the businesses stiffing labor.
      Want more people working and not sitting on their couches using food stamps? If so, how are you going to make business stop shortchanging labor?
      The ball is in your court. I look forward to your solution.

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    16. I don't think minority kids are the ones who feel "entitled" in the job market. I see the snowflake mentality in upper middle class white kids who expect a starting salary of $60 K with a B.S. from Baptist U.

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    17. Black or white, they're all getting stiffed by corporate America.

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  2. There are two different 1% in this paragraph, each referring to different distributions. The first refers to the percentage of children starting in poverty, the second refers to adult income levels. It may seem like a tautology if you think the 1% refers to the same thing, but it doesn't. I agree with Somerby that writers shouldn't present such confusing statements to readers.

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    1. Plenty of psychological studies show that people don't reason well with quantitative information. Expressing things as percentages (1%) instead of proportions (1 in 100) tends to confuse people and there are plenty who don't realize they mean the same thing. It isn't fair to Somerby to imply that he is condescending when studies substantiate this difficulty, even among educated people. But it is always easier to mock than to discuss.

      I don't understand how someone like Carson could have the talent to rise above his childhood circumstances and yet be unable to think clearly. He is truly an idiot. When did he give up thinking?

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    2. @12:53

      You confuse Dr. Carson not suffering liberal fools to "giving up thinking." Let's compare your clarity of thought with Doc Carson who was the first to separate occipital craniopagus twins, both surviving and his use of cerebral hemispherectomy to control intractable seizures as well as for his work in craniofacial reconstructive surgery, achondroplasia and pediatric neuro-oncology.

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    3. @ 1:22pm - Independent Russian news media estimate the Internet Research Agency employs 400 trolls. A former staffer, Ludmila Savchuk, told Mr. Chen that over two 12-hour shifts she was expected to produce propaganda amounting to five political posts, 10 nonpolitical posts and at least 150 comments on posts created by co-workers, often criticizing the American or Ukrainian government. Russian trolls sometimes pose as American liberals or conservatives on U.S. news sites, giving a false impression of public opinion.

      Mr. Putin has focused on undermining the Internet since 2011, after political opponents used Twitter and other social media to organize protests against a rigged parliamentary election. Last year he called the Internet a “CIA project.”

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    4. Dr. Carson = Chauncy Gardner.

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    5. Lefty racists cannot tolerate an accomplished neurosurgeon but they elevate to genius status a 110 IQ Affirmative Action Harvard Law grad who refused to release SAT or grades and was the only unpublished law review editor and a "constitutional law expert" universally deemed below mediocre by his academic peers.

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    6. @ 4:52pm - Independent Russian news media estimate the Internet Research Agency employs 400 trolls. A former staffer, Ludmila Savchuk, told Mr. Chen that over two 12-hour shifts she was expected to produce propaganda amounting to five political posts, 10 nonpolitical posts and at least 150 comments on posts created by co-workers, often criticizing the American or Ukrainian government. Russian trolls sometimes pose as American liberals or conservatives on U.S. news sites, giving a false impression of public opinion.

      Mr. Putin has focused on undermining the Internet since 2011, after political opponents used Twitter and other social media to organize protests against a rigged parliamentary election. Last year he called the Internet a “CIA project.”

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    7. anon4:52, Dr. Carson was a very successful and skilled surgeon, yoet he seems to have a lot of stupid ideas. how is that tax plan of his going to work? Also, did you give Obama an IQ test?

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    8. @AC/MA

      Considering POTUS Obama believes George Washington lived in The White House we can deduce U.S. History is not Obama's forte.

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    9. @ 10:29AM - Independent Russian news media estimate the Internet Research Agency employs 400 trolls. A former staffer, Ludmila Savchuk, told Mr. Chen that over two 12-hour shifts she was expected to produce propaganda amounting to five political posts, 10 nonpolitical posts and at least 150 comments on posts created by co-workers, often criticizing the American or Ukrainian government. Russian trolls sometimes pose as American liberals or conservatives on U.S. news sites, giving a false impression of public opinion.

      Mr. Putin has focused on undermining the Internet since 2011, after political opponents used Twitter and other social media to organize protests against a rigged parliamentary election. Last year he called the Internet a “CIA project.”

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    10. Spoken like one of the David Brock Correct The Record recruited "nerd virgins"*

      *Paul Begala term for Brock's Super PAC minions

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    11. Hey what's wrong with nerd virgins?

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    12. "Lefty racists cannot tolerate an accomplished neurosurgeon.."

      That sounds like one of those "facts" you pulled from Uranus.

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    13. This is correct. The paragraph Bob quotes says only 1% of disadvantaged black kids reach the 1% income quantile. It's actually really surprising that it's that high, given you'd expect many fewer to have that success.

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  3. That's a great pickup by Bob, which I'm embarassed to admit I missed on first reading. The numbers demonstrate that Dr. Carson's achievements are terrific. Actually, his achievements as a surgeon are not adquately measured by just the fact that he reached the top 1% in income.

    However, the numbers also seem to imply that kids born in deep poverty have about the same chance to reach the top 1% as kids not born in deep poverty. That's assuming that 1% of people reach the top 1%. However, one must also look at what it means to reach the top 1%. Peoples' income vary over time. A lot more than 1% of us will be in the top 1% temporarily at some point in our lives.

    Also, I find that somewhat incompatible that the figures show that these same kids born in deep poverty have a much smaller chance of reaching the top quintile as the kids not born in deep poverty (5% vs. 20%). yet they have the same chance of reaching the top 1%.

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    1. It doesn't say that at all. The likelihood of a child not born in poverty of reaching the top 1% is not given in the paragraph. To see this, a child born into the top 1% probably has a 99% chance of remaining in the top 1%, given the way wealth begets more wealth (it takes money to make money). Notice how Trump explained that his father loaned him $20 million to get his start in real estate (which he had to pay back, of course). How many kids in the bottom 1% receive $20 to get their start in any business? I am smart, well-educated and hard-working but I have never been in the top 1%, not even temporarily. So, I don't believe your glad remarks about temporary riches.

      You are the one who assumed the same chance of reaching the top 1% for the bottom 1% and the bottom quintile. You shouldn't be surprised that your assumption is incorrect. On the other hand, a chance of 0 would be the same for everyone, regardless of where they started because 0 is an impossible event. I have 0 chance of flapping my arms and flying, and that is true even for those in the top 1% of income, at least until Elon Musk attacks the problem.

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    2. 2:44 -- At any given point in time, only 1% of people are in the top 1%. If all those born in the top 1% stayed in the top 1%, then nobody at all born in the bottom 99% would be in the top 1%. Exactly 20% of people are in the top quintile. That's the starting point.

      If 1 in 100 of the top 1% were born in deep poverty, then those born in deep poverty be reaching the top 1% as frequently as those not born in deep poverty. Seems pretty surprising, if true.

      The point I was trying to make is that rising to the top 1% isn't the same as being in the top 1%. People move in and out of income percentiles over time.

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    3. There is no reason to assume that those born into poverty have the same chance of getting into the top 1% as those with higher incomes. In reality, most of the upward mobility is at the boundary between the top and the group immediately below the top. That is reflected by the 99 out of 100 who do not come from poverty.

      If 1 in 100 of the top 1% comes from poverty, the odds of being that person are not 1 in 100 but 1 out of all the people who are poor (1 out of 130 million for example). You need to be calculating the probability of becoming rich given the probability of being poor (a conditional probability). There are two sets of odds involved, not one. That is where you are making your mistake.

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    4. 5:15 -- That's not what the article said. You would be right if the article said

      If 1 in 100 of the top 1% comes from poverty,

      But, the article actually said:

      Barely 1 in 100 [children born into deep poverty in Detroit] will rise...all the way to the top 1 percent.

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    5. The article said it wrong. That is Somerby's point.

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    6. @7:43

      David doesn't really care what Bob wrote. He's just trying to spread the myth that anyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps, whilst trying to use Bob’s platform to bolster his case.

      This is the land of opportunity! Assuming you can get a job.

      Or having the luck of being a genius, like Ben Carson.

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    7. Anon 7:43 -- What you wrote sounds right. As I commented above, what WaPo wrote seems pretty surprising, if true. Can I ask how you know what the correct statement is. Did you find it somewhere or is that your (reasonable) guess?

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    8. Every once in a while there are articles about upward mobility. My comment came from those. Google social mobility and read what Wikipedia has to say, for example.

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    9. Thanks, Anon 9:31

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    10. [QUOTE]>>> Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated where Ben Carson went to medical school. It also had an incorrect figure for the number of poor Americans who would climb to the top 1 percent of earners, according to a recent study. Both errors have been corrected. <<<[END QUOTE]

      The article now reads:

      [QUOTE]>>> Only 1 in 20 children born into deep poverty in Detroit will climb into the top quintile of income earners when she or he grows up, according to research by economists at Harvard, Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley. Barely 1 in 450 will rise, as Carson did, all the way to the top 1 percent....

      He went on to medical school at the University of Michigan and did his residency at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he went on to have a decorated surgical career...
      <<<[END QUOTE]

      (And good for you DiC not to try and pass off that Thomas Sowell tripe that today's 25 year old MBA students who have no declared income -but like other poor Americans are actually living a pretty cushy life what with their subsidized housing, gym access, and free campus newspaper- are also tomorrow's corporate vice-president 1 percenters demonstrating that America is, indeed, the land of affluent poor people and astounding economic mobility.)

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    11. And good for you CMike not to try and explain, now that a factual error was identified and corrected, that to err is human.

      But questioning the humanity of those who err is divine.

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    12. Good job, CMike, finding that correction. Note WaPo's spin. The following 2 sentences mean exactly the same thing:

      One in 450 will rise, as Carson did, all the way to the top 1 percent

      Barely 1 in 450 will rise, as Carson did, all the way to the top 1 percent


      The unneccessary word "barely" was added to imply that this group has bad oppotunities. But, I don't agree. Since only 1 in 100 of total population are in the top 1%, then it's not bad that of the country's most downtrodden, 1 in 450 reach the top 1%. It's a higher ratio than I would have guessed.

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  4. Once you have kids, what is to prevent illness or recession from undermining your means of support? These people seem to always assume people are having kids irresponsible, never that life circumstances prevent them from maintaining the same income throughout their kids lives.

    The 75% illegitimacy rate for blacks would seem to undermine your suggestion that well-intentioned, financially secure and independent, dedicated and (trigger warning) hardworking parents create and perpetuate multi-generation poverty.

    Negligent, inhumane and anti-social behavior caused primarily by volitional choices of those 75% combined with liberal defense of the behavior (including offering ridiculously insignificant alternative causes) is the reason for 1 in 100.

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    1. Illegitimacy says nothing whatsoever about income. Higher illegitimacy is happening along the income spectrum. Poverty perpetuates multi-generation poverty. The chance of breaking into the higher income levels (upward mobility) was just as dismal generations ago when more children were legitimate. It costs money to have a wedding and honeymoon. People don't do it despite being committed to each other, to the kids, and legally required to provide parental support to their kids.

      I assume you are a major supporter of Planned Parenthood, given your belief that unwanted kids cause poverty. You clearly need to read Barbara Ehrenreich's book Nickled and Dimed, about how hard people work to live on minimum wage -- where she took 4 low-paying jobs for 3 months each to see if she could live on what she earned (without any kids). Try to develop some empathy instead of assuming anyone without money must be afraid of hard work. You wouldn't last a week in the shoes of most poor people.

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    2. ". Try to develop some empathy instead of assuming anyone without money must be afraid of hard work. You wouldn't last a week in the shoes of most poor people."

      Stop mistaking your self-righteous but irrational words for empathy. The misery and pathology in the black community is caused by the 75% illegitimacy rate more than any other factor. Try being more empathetic and less protective of your "right to follow your bliss" which would be the consequence of recognizing what we know is true.

      It's fascinating to observe the lengths of twisted logic the left goes through to avoid social responsibility. Tweeting "#blacklivesmatter is the extent of your social responsibility.

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    3. (the loss of which would be the consequence in your estimation)

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    4. The misery and pathology in the black community is caused by poverty coupled with racism which denies opportunity to take the usual routes to success (education coupled with initiative and hard work). No one is talking about following any bliss.

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    5. Anon 5:20 -- The value of education and hard work aren't denied to blacks today. On the contrary, blacks get substantial preference for college admission and de facto preference for many jobs.

      IMHO liberals deserve a lot of the blame for the large black underclass. Liberals had great civil rights policies up through the Voting Rights Act. But, eventually Democratic politicians just started giving black money or equivalent. That buys them the overwhelming black vote. But, long term, it encourages dependency and discourages ambition and hard work in many recipients.

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    6. All the manufacturing jobs disappearing, and a lot of causes, including the long history of racism, even though now the laws fave changed.

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    7. “Liberals deserve a lot of the blame… for the large black underclass.”

      Are you effin’ nuts? When have blacks ever NOT been an underclass?

      David, I don’t respect your view. I acknowledge it, and understand it.

      “But, long term, it encourages dependency and discourages ambition and hard work in many recipients.”

      Clearly, you’re referring to welfare (a word which actually appears in the preamble to our Constitution). There’s a truthiness to your view, but it’s just not that simple. Reagan was able to make it that simple, so long ago, and the meme lives on.

      I’m concerned because you seem to want to recycle right-wing tropes, without looking beyond simplistic ideas that tend to blame lack of success on the individual, without acknowledging that we live in a global system that insists that you must have money to survive. A system that has unemployment literally built into it.

      Sorry to bust on you man, but c’mon!
      Respectfully, Kratius

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    8. AC/MA -- yes, I agree that there are many causes. Note that Switzerland has an unemployment rate of only 3.16%. What are they doing differently from us?

      Kratius - You have a point. Blacks have always been an underclass, or worse. OTOH many other underclass groups have prospered: Filipinos, Jews, Chinese, Italians, Irish, Japanese, etc. Another thing to bear in mind is that in the 1940's black children were mostly raised in 2-parent families. The structure of AFDC encouraged 1-parent families. This led to a permanent change in the culture.

      Today, the black middle class is growing. Hopefully that trend will continue.

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    9. "Are you effin’ nuts? When have blacks ever NOT been an underclass?"

      Being an underclass including an immigrant underclass does not mean a group remains an underclass. Other groups turn their status around within one generation. Blacks have not because of the inhumane and narcissistic liberal hobby of enabling a culture of failure to continue and worsen.

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    10. "Clearly, you’re referring to welfare (a word which actually appears in the preamble to our Constitution). There’s a truthiness to your view, but it’s just not that simple. Reagan was able to make it that simple, so long ago, and the meme lives on."

      Blacks are scarred, crippled victims for life after hearing the term "nigger" yet living every day of their lives in a household without a negligent government dependent mother and no father or an imprisoned father has no effect.

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    11. 1:43,
      Don't forget redlining and Jim Crow.

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    12. 1:43 Having an imprisoned father isn't some unlucky coincidence, like being struck by lightning. It's a result of blacks committing crimes at a high rate. What are Democats doing to discourage black criminality?

      Have you ever read about Jackie Robinson and what he had to put up with? Not only the most horrid imaginable insults throughout every game, but real threats of physical violence. You say today's blacks are scarred and crippled just by hearing the N-word? If that's true, it's because they've been encouraged to be scarred and crippled by hearing the N-word. In other words, many of today's blacks have been raised to be wusses.

      BTW plenty of blacks are achieving high levels of success, despite hearing the N-word. What are Democrats doing to encourage blacks not to be crippled, but to redouble their efforts when hearing an insulting word? Sadly, today being a victim is rewarded. In the short run, that helps blacks. But, it's no way to build character.

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    13. @ 2:49pm - Independent Russian news media estimate the Internet Research Agency employs 400 trolls. A former staffer, Ludmila Savchuk, told Mr. Chen that over two 12-hour shifts she was expected to produce propaganda amounting to five political posts, 10 nonpolitical posts and at least 150 comments on posts created by co-workers, often criticizing the American or Ukrainian government. Russian trolls sometimes pose as American liberals or conservatives on U.S. news sites, giving a false impression of public opinion.

      Mr. Putin has focused on undermining the Internet since 2011, after political opponents used Twitter and other social media to organize protests against a rigged parliamentary election. Last year he called the Internet a “CIA project.”

      We are used to having DiC around, but these comments make it clear he is just trolling. Race baiting is spectacularly inappropriate at this website.

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    14. An Italian immigrant can change his name and after a generation, lose an accent and change cultural traditions. A black person, no matter how long his family is in the US, cannot change his skin color. As long as that visible marker of the underclass remains, his efforts will not eliminate discrimination against him -- because that discrimination is in the eye of the beholder, not the natural result of his efforts to improve his lot in life.

      This makes comparisons with immigrant assimilation specious. Any educated person understands this. That means that people still proposing this are racists and white supremacists -- people for whom education bounces off leaving the unrepentant bigotry in their hearts unchanged.

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    15. Perpetual aggrievedness is gratifying, perhaps doubly so on someone else's behalf. Beats working.

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    16. How much actual work does Donald Trump do?

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    17. Females have managed to achieve education and income parity, sometimes superiority depending on culture, despite that they won the vote later than blacks and had been considered property in every society since the dawn of humanity. Your excuse fails miserably. Nothing prevents blacks from attaining education and success except negligent parents and white liberals.

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    18. If true, you'd never see a white man in Finance after 2008.

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    19. "Nothing prevents blacks from attaining education and success except negligent parents and white liberals."

      Could have used more people with this "blame the victim" attitude on 9/12/2001.

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  5. I really don't get the joke. Is the monster the fact that they're recommending extreme wealth as a standard of achievement?

    In any event, the 1% was always code for the .1% who are the true bandits in the country. Pity that the corporate machine has taken it so literally.

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    1. To crib DiC: "Barely 1 in 100 [children born into deep poverty in Detroit] will rise...all the way to the top 1 percent."

      The joke being that 1 out of 100 (1%) making it to the 1%(1 out of 100) are exactly the same and that by definition that 1% of the population is the top 1%.

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  6. I'm inclined to believe that the WP is doing a double-whammy and hiding a psyop behind its profund(idio)ty — by implying that if we can just get rid of that pesky "barely" in the equation, complete & total equality will have been achieved!

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  7. Ben Carson's rise to the top 1% of income, if that is where he is, is at least partly dependent on his promotion of snake oil. - http://bit.ly/1WrylCo

    After all, it's the American way, isn't it?

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    1. I think he should get his tuition money back from the U. of Michigan for failing to teach him any US or European history, and what happened in his math classes? Someone shouldn't be a doctor without any grasp of knowledge outside that narrow area of specialization. I think medical education has changed a bit since Carson's school days.

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    2. You mean he didn't attend Oral Roberts University, like Michele Bachmann?

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  8. There were nearly 3000 comments to the Tankersly article in the WaPo. I think it was lazy, dumb, and of dubious morals for Bob not to have identified and reproduced a few that must have come from gap toothed Maddow watching rubes.

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    1. How many comments did you find followed the Tankersly article when you looked? It was "lazy, dumb, and of dubious morals," thereafter, for whom "not to have identified and reproduced," at least, "a few" those comments here to make your point?

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    2. I think @ 11:15 has not given Bob enought time. Surely the post on the comments will come within a few days, maybe a week, after many teasers.

      That said, CMike may have ruined Bob's plan by revealing the "monster" was a mistake by non human life forms which has been corrected. That would be like saying over and over
      that a kid who had already been accepted into a college could not get into college.

      Delete
  9. American mythologizing. Lincoln was born in a log cabin and rose to the presidency. Back then, everybody was poor. Large wide-ranging talent pool. Today, hardly anybody's really poor, so how many Lincolns do we suppose are there among such a group of losers?

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  10. 5 years ago I had warts, I was treated with some liquid applied to the warts they continued to grow and spread... The next 2 doctors did laser surgery to remove them. 1 year after the surgery, they grew back close to where the 1st ones were' so I was finally told it was hpv. I have had it for very long time, I contract it from my cheated boyfriend and I found out he was also infected and I end up the relationship between us. the warts was so embarrasses because it started spreading all over I have be dealing with this things for very long time the last treatment I take was About 2 years ago I applied natural treatment from Dr onokun herbal cure, a week after applying the treatment all the warts was gone. it's now 2 years and some months I don't have single wart or any symptoms of hpv. wow"" it's great, Dr onokun has finally cured me. Anyone living with hpv contact Dr onokun for natural treatment.
    His email address: dronokunherbalcure@gmail.com

    ReplyDelete