July 17, 2012

TOWN HALL

Are Race Riots News?

by Thomas Sowell

July 17, 2012

When I first saw a book with the title, "White Girl Bleed A Lot" by Colin Flaherty, I instantly knew what it was about, even though I had not seen the book reviewed anywhere, and knew nothing about the author.

That is because I had encountered that phrase before, while doing research for the four new chapters on intellectuals and race that I added to the revised edition of my own book, "Intellectuals and Society," published this year.

That phrase was spoken by a member of a mob of young blacks who attacked whites at random at a Fourth of July celebration in Milwaukee last year. What I was appalled to learn, in the course of my research, was that such race riots have occurred in other cities across the United States in recent years -- and that the national mainstream media usually ignore these riots.

Where the violence is too widespread and too widely known locally to be ignored, both the local media and public officials often describe what happened as unspecified "young people" attacking unspecified victims for unspecified reasons. But videos of the attacks often reveal both the racial nature of these attacks and the racial hostility expressed by the attackers.

Are race riots not news?

Ignoring racial violence only guarantees that it will get worse. The Chicago Tribune has publicly rationalized its filtering out of any racial identification of attackers and their victims, even though the media do not hesitate to mention race when decrying statistical disparities in arrest or imprisonment rates.

Such mob attacks have become so frequent in Chicago that officials promoting conventions there have recently complained to the mayor that the city is going to lose business if such widespread violence is not brought under control.

But neither these officials nor the mayor nor most of the media use that four-letter word, "race." It would not be politically correct or politically convenient in an election year.

Read more at Townhall.com

THE AMERICAN THINKER

Is Obama Ripping Off the Mask?

by James Lewis

July 17, 2012

American candidates for president have a predictable trajectory.  They begin by telling the party troops that they are really coming from the honest-to-gosh right or left, and then they move steadily toward the great fuzzy middle, so that by election time they end up sounding like Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee.

But Obama has been going off the standard script -- most recently by attacking capitalism in radical terms.  Namely, "If you've got a business -- you didn't build that.  Somebody else made that happen."

Democratic senators are reportedly "horrified" by Obama's behavior.

Last week, an Obama surrogate was accusing Mitt Romney of being a felon.

This is a new low in presidential hardball politics -- at least since LBJ accused Barry Goldwater of wanting to explode nuclear weapons on little girls picking daisies.

Ben Shapiro of Breitbart reports the following Obama transcript:

Is any of this (use of tax havens) actually illegal?

It appears not, but it's impossible to know for sure because Romney refuses to release enough information to let people make their own judgments.

Writes Shapiro:

... Last time I checked,  ...  there is a presumption of innocence[.] But Obama needs no evidence. He just needs innuendo. 

"And when did you stop beating your wife?" to quote the old legal joke.  But this is not a joke.

If Breitbart is right, the Obama campaign is actually raising money in China -- quite possibly from non-U.S. citizens, since its controls are lax.  Not a legal move, even if it's ignored by the Federal Election Commission.

The Obama campaign may be committing felonies while accusing others of being felons.  Hardball politics isn't new, but crazy hardball tends to be self-defeating.  It reflects rage and desperation rather than cold calculations.  Obama now seems to be playing crazy ball.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com

THE DAILY CALLER

Lawmakers, activists ratchet up pressure on GOP leaders for full ‘death tax’ repeal

July 16, 2012

As “taxmageddon” approaches with the scheduled expiration of the Bush tax cuts in January, a coalition of non-profit groups and conservative Republican lawmakers is pushing for permanent repeal of the estate tax, and putting politicians of both parties on the record as to whether they support full repeal.

Republican leadership has seemed hesitant to focus on any particular aspect of the tax-cut extension battle, favoring a simple extension of the tax cuts, which would hold the estate tax rate at its current 35 percent. If the tax cuts are allowed to expire in January, the rate would skyrocket to 55 percent — putting the United States’ rate among the highest in the world economy.

In a July 17 letter to Speaker of the House John Boehner obtained by The Daily Caller, the Family Business Coalition — which includes The 60 Plus Association, Americans for Tax Reform, Americans for Prosperity, The Club for Growth, the National Taxpayers Union, the American Conservative Union and others, including a number of industry groups — voiced support for the Death Tax Repeal Permanency Act, which currently has 217 cosponsors, including Democrats and 19 members of the 22 Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee. The act, sponsored by Republican Rep. Kevin Brady, was introduced in late March 2011 and will likely have 218 co-sponsors by the end of this week.

The letter singled the the estate tax out as “especially pernicious” among those set to increase in January, saying, “Passing a full repeal bill will firmly align conservative grassroots activists and members of Congress around a 0 percent death tax — one of many important priorities in any comprehensive tax reform plan.”

“Moreover,” the letter reads, “a national surge towards repealing the death tax is being seen across the country in many state legislatures.”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com