Having spent the last number of day at home due to the onset of a flu virus I have taken in hours of coverage of our latest police/black confrontation. Some impressions from one who has lived in the diverse State of New Jersey about two hours from the city of Baltimore.
New Jersey and Maryland share a similar union controlled economy. Maryland of course benefits from it's neighbor Washington DC and has been in a boom for the past ten years or so. This of course doesn't seem to filter down to the inner city residents unless you happen to be of the opinion that various forms of welfare and food stamps lead to core strength and growth. Nancy Pelosi has stated in the past that increased welfare can actually help an economy. In my opinion union based economies produce stratified economic conditions.
My impressions of the people on the street, in government, and the media:
I can't get my head around how many obese people inhabit inner city ghetto's. While statistically mired in poverty food appears inexpensive to this group based on waist size. Male youths appear either massively obese or rail thin, female youths appear overwhelmingly overweight. This is all anecdotal of course but seems consistent with inner city youth of my own State.
The Baltimore government mirrors big city government throughout the Northeast. Generations of progressive democrat administrations pumping out patronage. The mayor does a press conference wearing an Under Armor ball cap. Very stylish in the urban setting I'm sure. The police are multiracial, the kid had a violent rap sheet, I'm sure dozens of these cases pop up daily in a big city like Baltimore.
The media are doing their job. There are just to many of them. They keep the pot on the boil. Most of these kids and young adults would head home to watch a ballgame if they didn't have a camera crew to dance with.
I have had the pleasure to work with the good people a Shiloh Baptist Church here in Jersey. Some of the finest people I have even been around. They have to be heartsick over watching generation after generation of their youth debase themselves into such a culture.
Just some random notes from a flu ridden bed bug.
Inner city and poverty stricken people are obese for exactly the reason you stated, food is cheap.... or at least the food that none of us need to be eating. you finally might understand a little of life other then that which is in your ivory tower. They eat bad because bad food is a lot cheaper then good food. Ever been on both sides of that coin William? I have it costs more to eat right. Part of the reason that the middle class was better off 45 years ago then today is because of unions. Now William I am not a big union guy but in certain industries unions did great things although they did in time overstep the limits of which they were useful. I can see a time though William that the Unions are again going to be necessary as corporations keep trying to squeeze more and more out of the turnip at the expense of working Americans. Someday William you will descend from your perch and see both sides.....hopefully. Government is too big but corporations aren't always right either.
ReplyDeleteSo wath do we do ric about cheap food that makes our inner city youths fat? Obviously the dozens of food stamp and welfare programs are leading to a wrong conclusion
DeleteWhy don't you actually try to solve the problem instead of attacking anyone who brings up the subject and the inefficiencies of the status quo.
As for unions as I mentioned Maryland is probably the most unionized State in the country due to large public service unions related to DC employment. Why isn't this huge amount of money being spread throughout the lower income economy?
We are not living 45 years ago ric. We need solutions to save people's lives today.
The problem of course is being substantiated more every day and is continually subverted by the revolving door relationship we have between industry and government. The foods that are cheap are exactly the foods that stress immune systems, drive diabetes and lead to an epidemic of obesity related illness around the world.
DeleteThe grain industry, medical and pharmaceutical industry has subverted the discussion about the harm done by grains and root vegetables and played up the harm about every other food that is in competition with it… mainly dairy and meat.
Any t2 diabetic knows without a shadow of a doubt that a big gulp will not raise their blood sugar any more than a pizza or a white bread sandwich or mashed potatoes and gravy. They also know that reduction in grains for with fats, proteins and low GI carbs will help them immediately to quell their appetite and loose weight. The effect is so dramatic that some loose weight too fast. They also find after a couple of months of controlling their blood sugar in this way that even though their intake of fat, dairy and protein has gone up, their cholesterol numbers come down.
One has to ask that if refined grains that make up all breads including almost all ‘wholegrains’ will elicit an insulin reaction identical to table sugar why do people in 3rd world countries, within 10 years of getting ‘high energy’ flour and potato based foods aid food develop a diabetes problem?
Why does a Swedish study… the largest ever undertaken actually find that all-cause mortality is improved in women with total cholesterol above 6?
Why does the department of agriculture man itself with industry experts to guide its decisions… and if you need these experts to drive industry… why do we need the agency as a middleman to create laws?
The dangers of sugar are no myth but it’s just the low hanging fruit industry has decided to throw under the bus while taking more productive meat and dairy land for yet more grain based foods….
If you want to blame industry... you have to blame government... all of its 'experts' after all are the very ones that create the 'food pyramids and circles of life'.... and provide the gospel for the medical practitioner to parrot the message and it will only get worse as the goverment gets ever more control over what physicians say and prescribe
After all this time why the heck can't we get these people good information. Michelle worked on this, the pyramid has been out there for decades, why the heck does everyone have an axe to grind and the people end up eating shit and looking like shit, and living short lives in poverty.
DeleteWe both know TS the inner city administrations could care less about the people they represent. They are a bunch of self centered cock suckers that are killing a lot of good people.
OK, now ric and max will blame inner city shit on me and others that have zero control in the inner city. All we do is pay taxes out our ass to support these failed policies that are killing people.
Fucking frustrated with the entire exercise.
Boo Hoo.
DeleteTake heart William. You and I are engaged (if you can call it engaged) similarly by both Max and Rick.. at least on this site... their are plenty elsewhere beleive me.
ReplyDeleteYou want limited government… they echo NO government.
You show where certain social programs have been a disaster to the people they were meant to help and the echo is that you want to kill ALL social programs.
You say you want the country to actually follow the law… the constitution which by its own clear wording is THE foundation of all law in this country and they retort is that the constitution is out of date… a document of another century, yet they haven’t bothered to change it.
When you call them on the bad laws… then they start with the foot stomping and obfuscation. The don’t want to engage because they, like politicians know that actually getting to the root of 90% of problems lies at the feet of government… improperly written laws, poorly considered programs, inefficient execution and the solution to any problem found is always more money…
They always claim that you don’t compromise yet we seem to have compromised ourselves into 18 trillion of actual debt and I believe they have lost track of the unrealized debt…. They claim we have unlimited money at the federal level…. And then scream as the fed and the fractional reserve system rob savers and keep asset prices inflated so that the poorer among us can’t afford a house.
They defend the government for protecting the banks and bitch about corporatism all the while they side step completely, the issue of cronyism…
But William, take heart. While it is true that this self-loathing group of liberals is working tirelessly to exterminate their own white existence and the country is irrevocably changing in color, I believe they are shooting themselves in their socialist foot. Young people are finally starting to get the message that the government is more of a hindrance to their life than a help and increasingly they are starting to reengage with the idea that law and its foundation is important. These people while more socially liberal will hold increasingly reject the intrusion of government in their lives. The young people who attended Occupy Wallstreet were angry but they are increasingly realizing that there angry isn’t as much with business as it is with the revolving door of government collusion and graft.
The conspiracy theories about FEMA camps and the billions of rounds of ammunition are starting to show their vision… There is going to be a long hard fight with this government and its force… Furguson and Baltimore are the beginning of a change in attitude about who and by how much government will control our lives… whites have been relatively isolated from the blatant power of the police but No Knock warrants, dead pets and seized property are changing that. A lot of people no doubt are going to die but I think the liberal statist agenda could be backfiring.
You see, much of the liberal agenda depends on a population that no longer believes in a set of core values, or family, or religion … or work… and while the many millions of people that have been bussed, planed, trained and coyoted into our country are from leftist countries, they have learned that they really can’t depend on anyone to get them anything… they are all from a strong catholic faith and they have a very deep roots in family and the spirit required to get here requires more backbone than a whole sake of ‘give me’ liberals
Millions of family oriented people, steeped in moral values that far surpass the state in America today and a work ethic born out of necessity… these people just might be the cavalry that puts liberal yahoos back in their Marx and Lenin box and a Trojan horse to the Democratic Party…
"You want limited government… they echo NO government.
DeleteYou show where certain social programs have been a disaster to the people they were meant to help and the echo is that you want to kill ALL social programs. "
Thread the needle here for me TS. If I am taking your posts to an incorrect conclusion that I feel is logical, tell me under what circumstance you would be deeply philosophically opposed to social programs, but yet not somehow be clamoring for them to be ended. Granted, I will admit that when I claim you want no government, it probably is as stupid as you and William endlessly claiming that people like me worship at the alter of Marx and Lenin. And yeah, that Marx and Lenin stuff IS stupid bullshit despite the intoxication the right has with saying it.
I don't go down your constitutional rabbit hole because at the end of the day, I feel like it is a meaningless endeavor. Correctly, you can identify hundreds of undesired outcomes due to government programs. I could too. But, it seems like this is where you, and most conservatives want to stop and wail about how liberals and their love of Marx are runining everything. What are your actual solutions? I hear endlessly what you think is wrong, but little of what you would do, in accordance with the constitution to fix it.
I will grant you this, we have created a host of social programs that we are never going to get rid of. Social Security is one of them. Seniors DONT want it privatized, and they don't want it ended, and they also (especially the boomers) don't want it means tested. Food stamps. What would you do with the program. Again, I don't want to hear how it flies in the face of the constitution, I want to hear what you would do to reform it rather than outright end it. Deep down, I DON"T believe that conservatives are willing to amend social programs because that would be a tacit acknowledgement that we need social programs. This won't happen, but I'd be interested to hear your suggestions.
Part of an article about the many problems that exist in Baltimore
ReplyDeleteIf Democrats claim that they are uniquely sympathetic toward the poor and weak, that welfare programs can never be reformed, only expanded, and that perpetually pumping "investments" into cities is the only way to alleviate the hardship faced by citizens, that the war on drugs ruins the lives of so many inner city lives, it's more than fair to gauge the effectiveness -- not to mention the competence -- of those allocating and overseeing those policies. Because Republicans may be horrible, but they aren't running Baltimore.
60% of American are either obese or overweight.
ReplyDeleteThey don't all live in the inner city. They are your next door neighbors as well. It is a food issue but more importantly an issue of education on the types and amount of food to consume.
p.s. None of my neighbors are on food stamps and over half could easily afford to miss several meals.