The US government may be broke beyond our wildest imaginings but it still funds Barack Obama's lavish lifestyle, which this holiday season included an extra round-trip flight to Hawaii on Air Force One, enabling the president to resume his self-interrupted Hawaiian vacation. Working stiffs and other shlubs who pay for their own stuff (a.k.a. "taxpayers") might have expected the Obamas to tighten their belts (remember that one?) and rough it in DC over the holidays in the luxuriously appointed mansion already provided. Then they could have made one trip, together, to Hawaii, when Dad's schedule allowed it. But nothing says Christmas (to Obama) like golf. Seaside golf, that is. And if it costs the taxpayers a completely unnecessary $3.6 million, so be it. It's chump change, and I think you know who the chumps are.
We don't really expect President Obama to tighten his own, or the government's, belt. He doesn't have it in him. But there is an area in which he could do some real good. It's the crisis of fatherlessness in the black family. The Washington Times' Luke Rosiak reports some staggering numbers:
Among blacks, nearly 5 million children, or 54 percent, live with only their mother. Twelve percent of black families below the poverty line have two parents present, compared with 41 percent of impoverished Hispanic families and 32 percent of poor white families.It's especially dire in the President's own back yard:
The schism is most apparent in the District, which has a higher portion of two-parent families among whites, at 85 percent, and a lower share among blacks, at 25 percent, than any state.And in the rural South:
The largest geographic area of sustained fatherlessness contains the rural, largely black poor across Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana, tributaries of broken homes running 400 miles along the Mississippi River from Memphis, Tenn., where in some neighborhoods 82 percent of children live with their mothers alone, to Baton Rouge, La., in parts of which less than one-fifth of children have both parents at home.But it's widespread:
In all but 11 states, most black children do not live with both parents. In every state, 7 in 10 white children do. In all states but Rhode Island and Massachusetts, most Hispanic children do. In Wisconsin, 77 percent of white children and 61 percent of Hispanics live with both parents, compared with more than 25 percent of black children.Maybe so. Certainly, President Obama is in a unique position to influence young black men for the good, but, as far as I know, he has confined his efforts to Father's Day events and a website featuring tips on how to be an involved dad. All well and good, I guess, or at least mostly harmless, but why not make the problem of the broken black family a high personal priority? What's more important than that?
"Something has to be done about it, and it starts with the culture and reversing the attitude that marriage is not important. The president has a role to play in that. He's a married African-American father who can probably make a huge difference with words alone," Mr. DiCaro said.
Related: Columnist not in the mood to celebrate
No hope or change for urban schools
Many thanks to Michelle Malkin for the Buzzworthy link.
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"but why not make the problem of the broken black family a high personal priority? What's more important than that?"
ReplyDeleteYou're kidding, right? Two parent families are much less likely to be "on the dole" so will be less beholden to Mama Gov't. That right there is the Democratic Party base and as Republicans have learned you don't pi$$ off your base.
Yeah. I know. It amounts to a terrible betrayal. And no one calls him on it.
ReplyDeleteC'mon.... at this point loyal Americans all are joining with their president in saying, "Black families? Screw 'em."
ReplyDelete"Do as I say, not as I do"
ReplyDeleteObama isn't black. He just plays a magic negro on TV.
ReplyDeletePromoting marriage in the traditional sense of "people that make babies together should marry and stay together" is perceived by the gay "marriage" crowd as a slap inn the face. Can't have that.
ReplyDeleteHere is something else. Remember the back and forth I had with one guy over reducing our naval strength. He claimed we didn't need such a big navy, but I pointed out rotations and down time drain resources.
ReplyDeleteHere is something from the Amer Spectator.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/01/stark_evidence_of_us_british_naval_decline.html
Look no farther than these two news items, both from today's Sunday Times of London, to see the effect of two decades of shrinkage in the size of the United States Navy and the retreat of the Royal Navy from the high seas:
For the first time in two centuries, British businessmen and others have formed a private navy to protect shipping off the pirate-ridden coast of Somali on the Horn of Africa. A millionaire businessman has formed a company called Typhoon to furnish escort and protection, including troops, along the shipping lanes which world navies have proved inadequate to police. The first convoy of ships is projected for March or April.
The re-emergence of what used to called "privateers" (Sir Francis Drake is the most famous example from history) is the latest sign of outsourcing or abandonment of traditional military functions by Western nations whose militaries have contracted to pinpoint-size in the wake of the growth of the modern welfare state. Private security and private armies -- again, once known to history as "mercenaries," are another aspect of this trend.
The guy is killing our nation, as he surfs in Hawaii. Jeeezz...