Category: Domestic Affairs

What is American culture?

Rick Santorum, former senator from Pennsylvania, sparked controversy in an April 23 speech before the Young America’s Foundation, a conservative youth organization. Santorum said immigrants created a nation based on the Judeo-Christian ethic from a blank slate.

“We birthed a nation from nothing,” he said. “Yes, there were Native Americans, but there isn’t much Native American culture in American culture.” Santorum later said on Chris Cuomo’s CNN show that he “misspoke.” Or another words I said what I really believe and that was a mistake.

More than his lack of regard for native American way of life is the White Anglo-Saxon belief that they are superior to all other people in the world. It is obvious to me a core belief of conservative White Americans. Those people invading the Capitol on January 6 are a part of that group.

As minority peoples are ever larger part of the United States population, White people fear their may be a day in the future when they will be the minority.

California may be an indicator of what all of America in the 21st century will look like. No race or ethnic group constitutes a majority of California’s population: 39% of state residents are Latino, 36% are white, 15% are Asian or Pacific Islander, 6% are African American, fewer than 1% are Native American or Alaska Natives, and 3% are multiracial or other, according to the 2019 American Community Survey.

Rick Santorum Tweet May 22, 2021 “When I signed on with CNN, I understood I would be providing commentary that is not regularly heard by the typical CNN viewer. I appreciate the opportunity CNN provided me over the past 4 years. I am committed to continuing the fight for our conservative principles and values.”

Is this what the conservative GOP wants to stand for?

Slow Population Growth in California is a Good Thing

With immigration leveling off and a declining birthrate, the United States may be entering an era of substantially lower population growth, demographers said.  The 2020 census brought good new to California and other high population centers.

The new decennial census counted 331,449,281 Americans as of April 1, 2020. The total was up by just 7.4 percent over the previous decade.

New York, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia each lost a seat, in addition to California. Texas gained two seats, and Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon each gained one.

The importance of counting as many people as possible was highlighted by New York, which would have avoided losing the one seat if 89 more residents had participated in the census.

President Joe Biden is a Man in a Hurry

The president knows that his best opportunity to see laws passed that are on his agenda have to be completed during his first two years in office.  Why? Because control of congress usually is won by the opposition party in the second two years.

Biden has stuffed everything he dreams of accomplishing into his $2 trillion infrastructure and climate plan. He calls it the American Jobs Plan.  The ‘Imminent’ Collapse of Wastewater Reservoir in Florida Forces Evacuations definitely sends the message that America’s infrastructure is in very bad shape. America’s infrastructure received an overall grade of C- from the American Society of Civil Engineers, according to the group’s 2021 Report Card.

The control of the House of Representatives during Trump’s second two years went to the Democrats.  That very thing happened during Barack Obama presidency.  In fact both houses were controlled by the GOP during the last two years of his presidency.  It’s not a given since George W. Bush managed to have a GOP congress for four years but Eisenhower, who was president for two terms, saw both houses in Democratic control for six of his eight years in office.  The Democratic Party has a very narrow control of both houses.  Just the loss of one seat in the Senate and the GOP will again be in control. Doyle McManus in the Los Angeles Times reports that most prognosticators predict the GOP will gain control of the House of Representatives in the 2022 election.

Incidentally, I started writing this piece before the McManus column.

A reservoir in Florida that holds nearly 400 million gallons of wastewater from a former phosphate mine was leaking on Saturday, prompting hundreds of evacuations, the authorities said.

Cesar Chavez was The United Farm Workers founder

Cesar Chavez

Seven years after his death California’s governor signed a law making Cesar Chavez’s birthday a state holiday. At the time I asked why? After all other than recognizing his efforts to unite farm workers what did he do? The answer is nothing. Famed union leaders like Walter Reuther, who led the UAW, has not been honored with a holiday nor has any other union leaders. My theory is that Black Americans have a holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr. and so we must give the same honor to someone who is Hispanic because those people need someone to honor. It was a bad idea when the law was passed and it is still a bad idea.

Since Cesar Chavez‘s birthday is March 31 and a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times ,GUSTAVO ARELLANO, tried to justify the holiday but really does not make the case.

Owning Guns is more important then Life Itself

This is beyond senseless. It seems improbably after two mass shootings just days apart, but the Supreme Court is scheduled to discuss a case that could expand Second Amendment rights.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Americans love there guns more than life itself. A law to prohibit the use of assault weapons in Boulder, Colo., barred assault weapons in 2018 as a way to prevent mass shootings like the one that killed 17 at a high school in Parkland., Fla., earlier that year. That ban was blocked in court this month.

Boulder City Attorney Tom Carr declined to comment to The Washington Post, but pointed to language in the city’s code on assault weapons suggesting that the AR-556 pistol linked to the suspected shooter would have been included in the ban.

With each mass shooting flags are lowered, candles are light to remember the dead and flowers are placed near the place of the shooting. The last thing we do is walk away tsk tsking and do nothing to prevent another shooting elsewhere.

You can bet there will be more mass shooting this year and every year as long as we love guns more than lives.

A Nation of Haters

I am back to this topic again because it keeps coming up in the news.  It is necessary for me to remind you that HATE is alive and well in America.

The sickening hatred of all Non-White Christian Americans has never been worse than it is today.  They are racists. (Racist definition: a person who shows or feels discrimination or prejudice against people of other races, or who believes that a particular race is superior to another.)

When the president of the United States promotes hatred for minorities it provides the haters with the encouragement they crave.

“You Will Not Replace Us” is a white supremacist slogan that became popular in early 2017, as did its acronym version, YWNRU. The slogan appeared on white supremacist flyers, banners and graffiti in a variety of places in the first six months of 2017, gaining wider attention when white supremacists used the phrase at several rallies held in Charlottesville, Virginia, culminating in the large and violent Unite the Right event in August 2017.  Many in that march were chanting “Jews will not replace us.”

Now the focus is on Asian Americans.  The hate against them was promoted by former president Donald Trump who called the COVD-19 virus the China virus.  The haters have seen that as a signal to attack them.

The history of hate of Asian Americans is not new. The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882, prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers.

A total of 11,507 people of German ancestry were interned during war II, comprising 36.1% of the total internments under the US Justice Department’s Enemy Alien Control Program.  By contrast, an estimated 110,000–120,000 Japanese-Americans were forcibly relocated from the West Coast and incarcerated in internment camps run by the US War Department’s War Relocation Authority.

2018 marked an anniversary if a massacre of 15 Mexicans in el Paso, Texas.  The slaughter, which was carried out by white Texas Rangers, US soldiers, and local vigilantes, was justified by labeling the Mexican American families “bandits” and criminals.  It wouldn’t be the las.t On The August 3, 2019 a mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, which left 22 people dead, appeared to be the deadliest terror attack and hate crime against Latinos in recent American history.

The Pittsburgh synagogue shooting was a mass shooting that took place on October 27, 2018, at the Tree of Life – Or L’Simcha Congregation in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The Charleston church shooting (also known as the Charleston church massacre)[6][7][8] was a mass shooting on June 17, 2015, in Charleston, South Carolina, in which nine African Americans were killed during a Bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Dylann Roof, the killer, was a  21-year-old white supremacist, had attended the Bible study before he committed the shooting. He was found to have targeted members of this church because of its history and stature.

President Joe Biden may have empathy for those who have been attacked but it will take more than showing compassion to alter the hate in so many hearts.

Stimulus and the Impact of Shortages

President Joe Biden may have led the congress into an inflation that has been brewing for a long time.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said she didn’t think inflation posed a significant risk now that the Biden administration’s covid relief is signed and on its way to implementation. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has made it very clear that unlike some investors, he’s not stressed out about a potential rise in inflation later this year. And there’s good reason for that: he’s busy worrying about jobs.

Low interest rates and easy access to money has resulted in a buying flurry in southern California where I live. This did not start with the stimulus money sent to most families. Long before the COVID-19 pandemic new car sales and home buying was very obvious here.

My middle class neighborhood (median family income is $70,505) is now the home for high priced Lexus, Jaguar and other expensive car brands. This past October my nearby Honda dealer told me that they were not expecting any new shipments until after the new year. That means they have no motivation to sell cars at less than the sticker price. Real Estate brokers have been crying because the supply of new listings was too low for the past two or three years. It wasn’t. Most people do not keep moving from house to house. Homes have seen selling easily with bidding wars that drove the final selling price up by tens of thousands of dollars.

As of March 1, 2021 the Consumer Price Index data for the month of January found that the cost of food eaten at home rose 3.7 percent from a year ago — more than double the 1.4 percent year-over-year increase in the prices of all goods included in the C.P.I.

Even as a non-economist I can see trouble on the horizon.