DADvocate

An accurate and insightful look at Federal, state and local government attempts to fight poverty and crime and why Obama's plans to do more of the same will fail.

Nothing could be more misguided than to renew this “tin-cup urbanism,” as some have called it. Starting in the late 1960s, mayors in struggling cities extended their palms for hundreds of billions of federal dollars that accomplished little good and often worsened the problems that they sought to fix. Beginning in the early nineties, however, a small group of reform-minded mayors—with New York’s Rudy Giuliani and Milwaukee’s John Norquist in the vanguard—jettisoned tin-cup urbanism and began developing their own bottom-up solutions to city problems. Their innovations made cities safer, put welfare recipients to work, and offered kids in failing school systems new choices, bringing about an incomplete, but very real, urban revival.

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The War on Poverty, motivated by such toxic ideas, transformed welfare from temporary assistance into a lifelong stipend with few strings attached. As everyone knows, welfare rolls then skyrocketed, increasing 125 percent from 1965 to 1970 alone, and an entrenched generational underclass of poor families emerged.

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In 1968 . . . 13 percent of Americans were poor,” wrote Charles Murray in his unstinting examination of antipoverty programs, Losing Ground. “Over the next 12 years, our expenditures on social welfare quadrupled. And in 1980, the percentage of poor Americans was—13 percent.”

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An Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development study found that most European countries spend between 55 percent and 70 percent of what the U.S. does per student, yet produce better educational outcomes. If some urban school systems are failing children, money has nothing to do with it.

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What explains this conundrum are the local policies that have helped make housing unaffordable. In a study called “The Planning Penalty,” economist Randal O’Toole points out that half a century ago, when many cities were still gaining population, almost all of them boasted a healthy stock of affordable housing. Yet starting in the 1970s, cities began aggressively limiting and directing housing growth, enacting rules for minimum lot sizes and population density that produced significant cost increases for builders, who passed them on to consumers. In Trenton, New Jersey, O’Toole estimates that the city-imposed planning penalty adds $49,000, or 17 percent, to the median cost of a home in a city where the population has shrunk from 130,000 in the 1950s to 85,000 today. In nearby Newark, a city pockmarked with empty lots that has lost some 170,000 residents, the planning penalty is $154,000, adding 41 percent to median home value.

There is much more. Read the whole thing.

The liberal social programs have created an underclass dependent on government for housing, food, clothing and all other sustenance. Liberal politicians love to point their fingers at big business, conservatives and whomever else they can while it is really the liberal politicians who are at fault. The advantage for the liberal politicians is that they have created for themselves a dependable, dependent voting block who obligingly live marginal existences.

Keeping up with kids has kept me from blogging lately. For families, there are lots of things that keep you from blogging. At the moment, this has primarily been football and girls' basketball.

Fortunately, these sports have also provided plenty of excitement and proud moments. Last night's football game was one of those moments. For the first time, my son, a sophomore, started. He played defensive tackle in a game that would determine the district championship. Neither his team nor their opponent had a loss in the district.

My son's team held a run focused team averaging over 271 yards rushing per game to 147 total yards. At one point their opponents had third down and 33 yards to go. The most exciting moment for the defensive line was a 4th and inches play in which the defensive line stopped the attempted run up the middle. At 6'3" and 250 lbs., my son provided some beef in the middle his team had needed.

Hopefully, this means more playing time in the future. My son had missed the first part of the season due to an injury suffered last spring. He's been back for about 6 weeks. He's played some offensive and defensive line. Now it seems the coaches have found where he can most help the team.

Not only was this a major victory for the year, but historically. Last night my son's team won for the first time ever over this team at this team's field. My son said when he came out of the locker room, which took 20-25 minutes, his head coach was walking up and down the length of the football field. His coach appeared to by crying tears of joy.

The coach is a man who loves football and his players. When they both come together like this, he has one of those peak moments.

I expected my son to be jumping with excitement. While he was excited, he was exhausted. When the team bus finally arrived back at his school, his first words were, "Take me home. I'm tired."

At the beginning of the year, this team was expected to be average, a little down for them. The first game was a shaky victory. Each game they improved. The only two losses were to much larger 6A school (my son's school is 3A). The coaching staff has done a phenomenal job preparing this group of hard working boys. Congratulations!!

On my daughter's part, she achieved a goal in basketball that I was not at all sure she could. As a seventh grader, she made the high school freshman basketball team. While the high school does have a weak girls' basketball program, at the moment, and several other seventh grade girls made the team, I couldn't be prouder. (I say "at the moment" because they have a new varsity head coach who appears to be the real deal and there is a lot of young talent in the 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th grades.)

Middle school girls were invited to try out. My daughter mulled over the decision for a couple of day. I had told her the decision was completely hers and I would stand behind her either way. She decided to try out. And, as has become her custom, when she sets a goal, she achieves it.

I don't know how much playing time she'll get. At this time, it's about the future. The extra practice and games will only serve to make her a better player.

Making me extra proud, my daughter brought home her report card the next week and she made all A's. Smart, beautiful, athletic...it doesn't get any better than that. :-) Oh, actually, it does. My son's girlfriend, in a complimentary way, told my daughter she was "incredibly silly." I like it when people achieve without taking themselves too seriously.

P.S. For the Billy Ray/Miley Cyrus fans - my son's team's win was over Billy Ray's alma mater.

Mike McConnell on WLW radio discussed the Fairness Doctrine briefly. He doesn't believe it will be enacted because too many don't want it including liberals. But he had more interesting thoughts.

McConnell thought MSNBC would love it if it was applied to TV cable channels. The Fairness Doctrine would give them an easy out to ditch Chris Matthews and Keith Olberman, two of the lowest rated TV "news" shows.

My thought wasn't on the Fairness Doctrine but on Olberman's love for Obama. If Obama is elected, there won't be a blue dress with a stain. It will be a blue tie. And, the tie will belong to Keith Olberman.

Murder victim - Jennifer Hampton

An illegal immigrant, employed by the Days Inn on Lovell Rd. in Farragut, TN, just outside of Knoxville, raped, beat and murdered a homecoming queen from Alabama.

An Alabama homecoming queen found dead in Melton Hill Lake was first sodomized, beaten and strangled inside a Lovell Road motel, court testimony showed today.

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Miranda, an illegal immigrant, and Rosa Rodriguez worked and lived at the Days Inn motel on Lovell Road, where Hampton was staying on a business trip when she went missing sometime after Sept. 19.

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Hampton, 21, a native of Waterloo, Ala., had plans to enter nursing school. She had come to Knoxville to help train new workers for the opening of Mama Blue's Buffet restaurant.

Of course, if we demand immigrants enter our country legally so we can at least attempt to keep out criminals, we're called racists by the lefties. Probably, you can expect this to worsen after Jan. 20, 2009.

I recall a media news story of an illegal immigrant who managed to become a doctor. Good for him. But, I wonder which story is more common. According to U.S. Congressman Steve King's (R-Iowa) statement in 2006, 12 U.S. citizens are murdered each day by illegal aliens.

The lives of 12 U.S. citizens would be saved who otherwise die a violent death at the hands of murderous illegal aliens each day. Another 13 Americans would survive who are otherwise killed each day by uninsured drunk driving illegals.

That's a higher number than soldiers dying in Iraq and Afgahnastan. A country that doesn't protect its own citizens is pathetic.

And, the businesses that employ murdering illegal immigrants are worse than pathetic. I hope Ms. Hampton's family sues Days Inn for ownership.

I wonder if the Southern Poverty Law Center will assist Hampton's family in collecting a judgment against Days Inn and its owners. The SPLC certainly has no problem with taking homes and ranches from U.S. citizens and giving them to illegal immigrants for much lesser reasons.

Some liberal whackos will call me racist for posting this story. Some will say I don't look like them. Some will say I cling to my guns and religion. But the liberal, lefty whackos values are so warped it's genuinely scary. They can justify any means by their ends. (Rear ends mostly) This is what frightens me most about a potential Obama presidency.

Talking with a liberal friend today, he convinced me we should be grateful that we (they) voted in a Democratic Congress two years ago. He showed me how gas and energy prices would have soared through the roof this past summer and that a Republican Congress would have just gone on vacation rather than do anything to help everyday Americans.

He also described in great detail with convincing evidence how the Democratic Congress had averted economic disaster for the country. The Dow would have fallen below 8,600 which had reached 12,849.36 in April, 2008. He described how banks and insurance companies would have been folding left and right. He said Congress would have been forced to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to try and rectify the massive economic problems.

Had my friend not had convincing evidence of our Democratic Congress' actions to avert these problems, I never would have believed such outrageous claims.

Thank goodness for our Democratic Congress.

In an unprecedented move, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, allowed new voters to register and cast an absentee ballot on the same day during a week long period that ends Oct. 6. While the courts upheld the legality of this action, other groups, including ACORN, may have used it as an opportunity to get many to fraudulently register and vote.

These two videos by a college TV network, palestra.net, show the problem. It appears the left leaning MSM doesn't care if we have a honestly functioning democracy.

Did you hear how the ACORN worker described how the voters he "helped" probably wouldn't be living in the same place in a week or two. I wonder how many places some of these people will vote.

Is this what we have to look forward to if Obama is elected? USSR style elections where your "vote is a meaningless joke."

The spirit was freedom and justice
And it's keepers seem generous and kind
It's leaders were supposed to serve the country
But now they won't pay it no mind
'Cause the people grew fat and got lazy
And now their vote is a meaningless joke
They babble about law and order
But it's all just an echo of what they've been told
Yeah, there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watchin'

Some how Monster is as appropriate today as it was 40 years ago. I still have my original copy of the album. I hope the words aren't true but ...

Democrat or Republican, if you don't believe in, respect and uphold the sanctity of one person one vote and the principles of an honest election then you don't believe in the principle upon which this country is built.

What say you Obama? You used to work for ACORN.

Three songs. Which do you think would be the best theme song for Obama and his disciples?


Chain of Fools


Ship of Fools


Why Do Fools Fall in Love


Foolish (I included this because the beginning of the video brings up racism.)

Which song would be the best theme song for Obama and his disciples?
	Chain of Fools
	Ship of Fools
	Why Do Fools Fall in Love?
	Foolish
pollcode.com free polls

PsychoPhil has specifics on the children's arrow earmark.

Thank God Congress is protecting the children's arrow industry.

The one thing about Joe Biden and Barack Obama that turns me off the most is their slick, snake oil salesman styles. I keep getting the feeling that they're trying to sell me a bridge, to nowhere maybe.



Joe Biden's smile in his Katie Couric interview as he tells us how paying taxes is our patriotic duty gives me that same shiver down my spine (not leg like Chris Matthews) as fingernails scraping a blackboard. Obama's only slightly smoother.

In his smooth, eloquent voice Obama explains to us how he's going to turn turn American into nirvana. One only has to listen with moderate attention to realize he's blowing smoke. He can't do what he promises, no person can. And, he says whatever he thinks his audience wants to hear. He has no foundation.

In the same way that every sociopath cons people, Biden and Obama con voters everyday. My audacity is hoping the consequences of too many people falling for their lines aren't too damaging.

UPDATE: Listening to WLW radio I heard co-host Tracy Jones describe Joe Biden in the debate last night as looking like "someone lying to his wife." Guess I'm not the only one who gets that feeling.

Update below.

Robin Hahnel, economist, professor emeritus of economics at American University and currently visiting at Portland State University, predicts economic disaster if the Senate bail out bill is passed in its present form. On the Mike McConnell show on WLW radio Hahnel said this earlier today.

"This bailout is so badly designed and so aimed in the wrong direction. And fails to do the things that are absolutely necessary that I don't think that it is really going to substantially improve the prospect of avoiding a worst case scenario."

"What was required was a competent intervention. And this is anything but competent."

"Anybody who thinks they've actually come up with a competent response to the most serious economic problem this country's faced in 80 years is delusional because they have not."

More here in this podcast. Hahnel is about the last 1/3 of the podcast.

Hahnel went on to say that by the inaugaration of the next president we could be in the economic equivalent of a category 5 hurricane.

More comments by Hahnel from a couple of weeks ago.

He said today: "No, the government cannot walk away from the financial crisis and let the chips fall where they may. Wall Street, the Republican Party, and the neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party have created a mess so huge that at this point the ordinary person on the street would suffer terribly in absence of massive government intervention.

"However, there is every reason to believe the intervention Treasury Secretary Paulson and President Bush are urging Congress to sign off on would prove to be a disaster. (1) It is fundamentally different from the liquidation of failed savings and loan assets by the Resolution Trust Corporation to which it is being compared, and may well fail to stem the crisis of confidence. (2) While it seeks to put Wall Street back on its feet with a full pardon, it offers no comparable relief or pardon to citizens who have already or will soon lose their homes or suffered bankruptcy. (3) It maximizes taxpayer liability and minimizes opportunities to recoup taxpayer losses when financial institutions recover. And (4) at a time when investment priorities must shift dramatically to move us toward a carbon neutral economy, it would leave these crucial choices in the hands of the same people who squandered the nation's investment resources over the past two decades while feathering their own nests handsomely. In short, it is a Wall Street idea, peddled by a former Wall Street CEO, that is likely to prove as bad an idea as Wall Street's last bad idea -- deregulate us and allow us to run the nation's economic business."

But, don't worry too much, it's safe money that our Senators and Congresspersons will be doing just fine.

UPDATE: Need more proof of Congress' lack of sincerity in "solving" the financial crisis. Look at these ridiculous earmarks, aka "sweeteners."

The good part starts about 27 seconds in.