Roanman

People keep saying that they want that "National Conversation About Race".  We are of the opinion that for the most part they're lying through their teeth. But just in case someone is telling the truth on that one, here's a good start.

As always, clicking on the chart will take you to it's source.

Black Americans at the median, earn less money than Asian Americans, White Americans, and American Hispanics, in that order.

Black Americans at every level of educational attainment suffer higher rates of unemployment than do White, Asian and Hispanic Americans.

Apologists for Black America frequently site the statistical fact that there are more White Americans than Black Americans on the welfare rolls. The following is a chart reflecting that fact with regards to SNAP recipients.

Unknown?????

Apologists for Black America invariably fail to mention another statistical fact. Black Americans make up only about 13% of the total American population. As opposed to between 64% and 72% for White Americans, depending on your criteria regarding just exactly who is White.

Black Americans are imprisoned at a significantly higher rate than are White Americans.

Again, apologists for Black America complain loudly that this disparity has to do with racist sentencing policies for possessing and selling illegal drugs, and in particular differences in sentencing across the board for use, possession, sale and distribution between crack and the powdered form of cocaine, Black Americans cocaine users being significantly more likely to indulge in Crack than are White American cocaine enthusiasts who prefer the powdered form.

They certainly have a point when it comes to the category "Street Level Dealer".

However, that Black Americans commit a significantly higher percentage of violent crime relative to their percentage of the total population than any other racial group in America is not even debatable. (FBI crime statistics combine Whites and Hispanics into the same group, called White)

Clicking on the image below will take you to the 2013 FBI Uniform Crime Report. It is important to understand that these statistics are for arrests and not for convictions. Having said that, the figures are truly ugly as Black Americans make up 52% of the arrests for Murder, 56% for Robbery, 33% for Aggravated Assault and with the exception of Driving Under the influence, Liquor Law violations and Public Drunkenness, Black Americans never approach their relative percentage of 13% of America's total population. Interestingly, 36% of the total arrests for "Suspicion" and 44% of all arrests for Curfew Violations and Loitering are made on Black Americans which I think can be easily construed as evidence of the pervasive "Arrested for Driving While Black" charge, registered by Black Americans against Police Departments across America for generations now.

BUT! ......................... 

What if maybe, all of this has nothing to do with race or racism or anything of the kind? What if there is something else at work here altogether?

The Right just loves to reference a 1990 report that has seemingly disappeared from the internet from The Progressive Policy Institute research arm of the Democratic Leadership Council that states as follows, “... the relationship between crime and one-parent families” is “so strong that controlling for family configuration erases the relationship between race and crime and between low-income and crime."

As early as 1965 New York Democrat, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan came to the identical conclusion in his report titled "The Negro Family: The Case For National Action. Office of Policy Planning and Research United States Department of Labor March 1965" aka "The Moynihan Report".

That report was for the most part vilified as both sexist and racist.

Results of a 1994 Wisconsin study on juvenile incarceration, based on data collected in 1993, when combined with census data for the state of Wisconsin from it's Current Population Survey for 1993, are as follows;

Additionally, children from biological two parent families on average miss fewer school days, have higher grade point averages, and are more likely to attend college. Of those who attend college, children from biological two parent families are more likely to graduate than children from both single parent families and children from biological/stepparent families.

Here is some of the research.

Test Scores: Elementary school children from intact biological families earn higher reading and math test scores than children in cohabiting and divorced single and always-single parent families. David J. Armor, Maximizing Intelligence (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2003): 80.

Test Scores: Adolescents from non-intact families have lower scores than their counterparts in intact married families on math, science, history, and reading tests. Youngmin Sun and Yuanzhang Li, "Parents' Marital Disruption and Its Uneven Effect on Children's Academic Performance- A Simulation Model," Social Science Research 37 (2008): 456.

Test Scores: Adolescents living in intact married families or married stepfamilies (with stepfathers) performed similarly on the Peabody Vocabulary Test, but adolescents living in single-mother families or in cohabiting stepfamilies (with their biological mother) did worse than those in intact families.Wendy Manning and Kathleen Lamb, "Adolescent Well-Being in Cohabitating, Married, and Single-Parent Families," Journal of Marriage and Family 65 (November 2003): 876-893.

Grades: High school students who live in intact married families have a higher average combined GPA in English and math (2.9) than those in married stepfamilies, divorced families, or intact cohabiting families (2.6) and those in always-single parent families or cohabiting stepfamilies (2.5). National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. As cited by Patrick F. Fagan, "Family Structure and School Performance of U.S. High School Students." Available at http://www.frc.org/content/mapping-america-family-structure-and-school-p.... Accessed 12 September 2011 .

Attending College: Over 57 percent of children who live in intact biological families enter college, compared to 32.5 percent of children in stepfamilies, 47.5 percent of children in single-parent families, and 31.8 percent of children who live in families without either parent present.Gary D. Sandefur, Sara McLanahan, and Roger A. Wojtkiewicz, "The Effects of Parental Marital Status during Adolescence on High School Graduation," Social Forces 71, no. 1 (1992): 112.

College Graduation: Students from disrupted families are less likely to complete four-year college than their peers from intact biological families. Michele Ver Ploeg, "Children from Disrupted Families as Adults: Family Structure, College Attendance and College Completion," Economics of Education Review 21, no. 2 (2002): 174.

Overall: Adolescents from single-parent families and cohabiting families are more likely to have low achievement scores, lower expectations for college, lower grades, and higher dropout rates than children from intact biological families (after controlling for other family socioeconomic factors).Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur, Growing Up with a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994): 79.

Behavior: First grade students born to married mothers are less likely to behave disruptively (i.e. disobey a teacher, be aggressive with other children) than those born to single or cohabiting mothers. Shannon E. Cavanagh and Aletha C. Houston, "Family Instability and Children's Early Problem Behavior," Social Forces 85, no. 1 (September 2006): 551-581.

Suspension: Adolescents in single-parent families, married stepfamilies, or cohabiting stepfamilies are more likely than adolescents in intact married families to have ever been suspended or expelled from school, to have participated in delinquent activities, and to have problems getting along with teachers, doing homework, and paying attention in school.Wendy Manning and Kathleen Lamb, "Adolescent Well-Being in Cohabiting, Married, and Single-Parent Families," Journal of Marriage and Family 65 (November 2003): 876-893

Attendance: Compared to adolescents from intact married families, those from divorced families and cohabiting families have many more unexcused absences and skip more classes.Barry D. Ham, "The Effects of Divorce on the Academic Achievement of High School Seniors," Journal of Divorce and Remarriage 38, no. 3 (2003): 180.Dropping Out: Students from stepfamilies and single-parent families are three times as likely to drop out of school as students from intact biological families, even when controlling for socioeconomic status.[13]

Dropping Out: Students from stepfamilies and single-parent families are three times as likely to drop out of school as students from intact biological families, even when controlling for socioeconomic status.Herbert Zimiles and Valerie E. Lee, "Adolescent Family Structure and Educational Progress," Developmental Psychology 27, no. 2 (1991): 314-320.

High School Graduation: Eighty-five percent of adolescents in intact biological families graduate from high school, compared to 67.2 percent in single-parent families, 65.4 percent in stepfamilies, and 51.9 percent who live with no parents. Gary D. Sandefur, Sara McLanahan, and Roger A. Wojtkiewicz, "The Effects of Parental Marital Status during Adolescence on High School Graduation," Social Forces 71, no. 1 (1992): 112.

Applying to College: Sixty-nine percent of children from intact biological families applied to college, according to one study, compared to only 60 percent of students who were not from intact families. Gary D. Sandefur, Sara McLanahan, and Roger A. Wojtkiewicz, "The Effects of Parental Marital Status during Adolescence on High School Graduation," Social Forces 71, no. 1 (1992): 112.

Educational Expectations: The adolescent children of single-parent families or stepfamilies reported that their parents had lower educational expectations for them, were less likely to monitor schoolwork, and supervised social activities less than the parents of children in intact biological families. Nan M. Astone and Sara S. McLanahan, "Family Structure, Parental Practices, and High School Completion," American Sociological Review 56 (1991): 309-320.

College Expectations: Whereas 31.3 percent of sons and 26.7 percent of daughters from intact biological families plan to get a college degree, 42.4 percent of sons and 35.9 percent of daughters in single-parent families do not plan to get a college degree. Rashmi Garg, Stella Melanson, and Elizabeth Levin, "Educational Aspirations of Male and Female Adolescents from Single-Parent and Two Biological Parent Families: A Comparison of Influential Factors," Journal of Youth and Adolescence 36 (2007): 1010-1023.

Parental Expectations: Sixty percent of mothers in intact married families expected their child to graduate college, compared to 40 percent of mothers in cohabiting stepfamilies and 36 percent of always-single mothers. Kelly R. Raley, Michelle L. Frisco, and Elizabeth Wildsmith, "Maternal Cohabitation and Educational Success," Sociology of Education 78, no. 2 (2005): 151.

Graduate Studies Expectations: About 40 percent of sons and 44.7 percent of daughters from intact biological families aim to get more education after obtaining their undergraduate degree, compared to 30.7 percent of sons and 35.3 percent of daughters from single-parent families. Rashmi Garg, Stella Melanson, and Elizabeth Levin, "Educational Aspirations of Male and Female Adolescents from Single-Parent and Two Biological Parent Families: A Comparison of Influential Factors," Journal of Youth and Adolescence 36, no. 8 (2007): 1017.

That there was some of the research.

Can anyone here possibly think that any of the above does not reflect in the potential for the lifetime earnings of an individual child? This matters a great deal because as you will discover below, this problem amplifies itself with every subsequent generation.

From Fair Test, College Board and the Wall Street Journal. Evidently, on average, children from every single economic bracket outscored every single lower bracket in every category on the 2014 SAT exam.

You really should read that again !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now here's where it gets really interesting ..... at least to me.

It literally pays to be married as .....

And ...

Conversly.

Don't just get caught up with the 48% "Never married", take note of the only 13% "Married with husband present" as well.

Seemingly, as John Wooden once famously said,

As an aside, I think that one might logically conclude that this would apply to women and fathers equally well.

But the children of Black Americans by a very strong percentage do not live in two parent families.

Or, the other way to look at it.

Feel free to draw your own conclusions here, but mine are as follows.

While it may not solve the entirety our issues with race in America, Black Americans in general and black American children in particular would be a helluva lot better off if black men and women were to get ..... not necessarily to each other ..... and then stay ..... MARRIED.

This pretty much goes for just about everyone else as well.

Just sayin'.

If you take a minute to understand how our money is created, the perversity and corruption in our system will become clear. And, when I say system, I mean our monetary system to be sure, but also our entire system of government as it functions today.

Most of our money starts out in life as debt. When the Federal Government of the United States of America decides that it needs money that it otherwise does not have, it issues debt ….. bonds.  Those bonds are sold at auction by the Treasury Department.  Much if not most all of these bonds are purchased by a group of twenty or so large, mostly Wall Street banks designated by The Federal Reserve Bank as "Primary Dealers".

Interestingly, The Federal Reserve Bank or "The Fed" as it is commonly known is not an agency of the Federal Government of the United States of America as one would reasonably expect by virtue of it's name.  It rather is a privately held institution, owned in large part by ..... wait for it ..... the "Primary Dealers.  The Federal Reserve Bank adds or subtracts money from the economy by trading government bonds with the "Primary Dealers", mostly always at a profit to the "Primary Dealers".

Purchasing bonds from the "Primary Dealers" injects cash into the economy as the Federal Reserve simply makes a journal entry into it’s own computer system for it's own account, and in so doing it deposits a sum of money which did not exist one instant before and thus some number of billions of dollars of new money is born out of thin air.  It only dies when the Fed subsequently sells those bonds back into the economy, thus drawing cash out of the economy, or when the government pays that money back by redeeming it's previously issued bonds.  In other words, that money is for the most part immortal.

The Federal Government of the United States of America then pays the required interest on this debt out of tax revenue.

Lately the Federal Reserve Bank has on occasion been buying the bonds back from the "Primary Dealers" the very next day following their original purchase by the "Primary Dealers" from the Treasury Department.  This enables these preferred banks to buy the next batch of new bonds and then subsequently resell them to the Federal Reserve Bank at another profit whenever the Federal Government of the United States of America again decides that it needs to spend some money that it does not have.  Usually, that would be tomorrow.

This is the nuts and bolts of the proceedure commonly referred to as "Monetizing The Debt".

Here is where it gets real interesting ..... at least to me.  Congress is empowered by the Constitution to “coin” money without ever having to fool around with The Fed, issuing bonds, debt or making interest payments. U.S. Constitution - Article 1 Section 8 begins as follows: The Congress shall have Power To ….. some stuff you should probably take the time to read ….. Clause 5, “Coin Money, regulate the Value thereof” ….. and then some other stuff you should probably also take the time to read.  Congress punted on that right with the passage of The Federal Reserve Act of 1913, which Act created The Federal Reserve Bank as a privately held institution.

Were the Federal Government of the United States of America or any other nation in the world for that matter, to simply make it's own entry into it’s own account at it's own bank, rather than the privately owned institution that it now banks with, there would be no debt, no sale of bonds and no need to pay any subsequent interest payments out of tax receipts.

There most certainly would be instances of inflation, which would most certainly be underreported by a legion of governmental economists kept on the payroll, in one way or another, for purposes of massaging numbers in an effort to obscure the true rate of inflation in a cynical effort to evade accountability to the American people.  BUT ..... how is any of that different from what we have today?

The hidden benefit here is of course that there would be no insider profits to be had for the "Primary Dealers”.  Which profits they are presently using for the purchase of among other things, legislation that suits their own special interests, largely to the detriment of the American people.  That last part there is just my opinion.

Were we to simply cut out the middle man by chartering a bank that is wholly owned by the American people through the Federal Government of the United States of America and let it give birth to it's own money, a lot of our problems, most notably our debt, would become a whole lot more manageable.

Doesn't that strike you as an ever so much better approach?  It certainly worked for Andrew Jackson.

In the year of 2000 there were seven countries whose economies operated without a privately owned central bank, they were:

Afghanistan

Iraq

Sudan

Libya

Iran

Generally accepted "terrorist" hotbeds all.

Cuba

North Korea

Those well known human rights abusers.

Today, thanks to the yoeman efforts of both the Bush and the Obama administrations on behalf of the world's central bankers, only three remain:

Cuba

North Korea

Iran

It doesn't take much reading up on this stuff before pretty quick you come across the Rothschilds, Khazarian vs. Abrahamic Jews, Synagogue of Satan stuff, the Rockefellers, Trilateral Commission, the Bank for International Settlements, Bilderbergs and The Council on Foreign Relations etc., all of which completely saturates this conversation.

And, all of which, while fun and most likely mostly true, completely misses the point.

That point being, why on earth would any nation put it's national bank and thus it's supply of money in the hands of privately held interests rather than in the hands of a democratically elected or governmentally appointed body, and thus provide public oversight of the peoples money?

The reason is obvious, ... at least to us ... a privately held central bank enriches banks and bankers, or in other words, the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, denizens of The Council on Foreign Relation, Trilateral Commission, Bilderbergs, Bank for International Settlements, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and the other Primary Dealers, all at the expense of ordinary citizens. 

You can think and think and think and think and think and think and think and think and you will not come up with a system for funding your government that is more damaging to the average citizen.

I don't care what it is that you care about when it comes to politics, whether you are of the right or the left, liberal, conservative, socialist, communist, libertarian, anarchist, ambivalent or just plain disgusted, there is absolutely no possibility of achieving anything of your dreams for your nation until the money supply is ripped from the hands of the privately owned central bankers and vested with your nation's citizenry.

Where it obviously, will undoubtedy, absolutely and damn near immediately go FUBAR ......... but FUBAR in most of the world's economies lately, rates as a significant improvement. 

Until people seize control of the supply of their money, it ain't their country.

They are simply tenants or indentured servants or in the term of the day, "debt slaves".

Because ..... If it ain't your money, it ain't your country.

If you recall some time ago we took note of the fact that despite the relentless increase in America's yearly "investment" in education, results as measured by standardized test scores remain in decline.

You don't really have to recall, here's the stuff.

You may remember that at the time, we offered the following thought,

"As an aside, we think that issues having to do with K-12 education have far more to do with failing families than they do with failing schools."

Then, in our last post we took note of a profound increase in women entering the labor force.

After which, we offered the following opinion, "We view this in and of itself as neither a good thing nor a bad thing."  although the remarkable visual similarity between declining test scores above and the Husbands Only working line below is ... well ..... remarkable.

So .....

We do view it as is a thing.

More important, we see this thing on a daily basis as this just is how things are nowadays.

This much bigger thing ..... IOHO ..... we also see on a daily basis, as this is also how things are.

As .....

And ...

And while we're on the subject, single parent families account for over half the total of America's welfare recipients, while two parent families accounted for around 5% in 2010.

And family income is the single most powerful predictor for success on standardized academic achievment tests.

Apologies for the fuzzy image, it is however worth the eye strain as there is some good stuff in there.

Our conclusion here is that you should now be in a position to draw your own set of conclusions.

But ......... What to do?  What to do?

Later for all of that, we're still bitching.

I have Terry and a couple of the minions all over me to get it back up to speed.

And I will.

Mostly lately I've just been reading in an effort to separate fact from fiction.

The news of the world by the way is mostly fiction, as you can no longer trust any source.

I don't view this as tragedy since it began to occur to me that in all likelihood, you could never trust any source.

We just mistakenly choose to trust those sources with which we mostly agree.

After all, I'm a reputable guy and if these guys agree with me they must be reputable guys as well.

Right?

Mmmmm ..... maybe not.

So what to do?

For the forseeable future, you just gotta test everything.

Anyway, here's some pretty good stuff from CBC, The National, it's about 24 minutes and moves along pretty good.

The Monarchs of Money.

That's 178 words TD ..... not counting these.

It's 185 if you count those, but not these.

199 counting those and these.

Our second plank offers up our thinking on "Climate Change" which having not sold all that well under it's original name, "Global Warming" and many of it's chief promoters having been discredited as haters, cowards, shameless profiteers and crazed sex poodles it has now been repackaged with a new name, new marketing and a new catastrophe ... Hurricane Sandy.

To begin with, the earth has been heating up lately ..... probably.

If you look at the chart above and notice the orange lines at the right end.  Those lines represent those years where temperatures were actually measured using instruments that record real temperatures.  

Take note of the word "Reconstructed" in the key at the upper left hand corner.

Among the problems with calculating "Climate Change" is that word "Reconstructed" as in the year 1000 AD there were almost no thermometers hanging outside the conning tower at your local airport recording daily temperatures.

For the better part of 1900 years out of a 2000 year ... ish ... chart, we're calculating average temperatures from tree rings and ice cores ..... among other things.

This bares repeating ..... tree rings and ice cores.

The problems in data collection are endless as even recently, examples of blatant stupidity and/or pure fraud have been detected in the numbers.

Here are just two physical examples.

By way of explanation for what you're about to look at here, the refrigeration unit and air conditioners blow cold air into the building and exhaust the hot air out ..... pretty much directly at the temperature sensor/thermometer.

Click on either photo below for more examples of sensor placements which are likely serving to help cook the books.

Get it? ..... Cook? ... the books?

I can't crunch the numbers on the research but there are enough complaints about the treatment of the numbers from people who can, not to mention enough assurances from a raft of people who for damn sure can't, to make my bullshit detector swing wildly.

Read this Richard Muller paper from 2003, it's a little long but it's not very tough reading.

Or you can take my word for it as I did read it because, while it is a little long it's not very tough reading.

There is a goodly amount of political nonsense and blatant profiteering being sold as "Science".

Understand something here, all of this is before you even begin to consider possible causes.

Which brings us to our first position.

The Moon is also warming up by the way.

Yeah, yeah that's only a 4 year chart, we're just having a little fun pretending to be Progressives.

NASA also thinks that Mars is warming up along with maybe Jupiter and Triton, but who the hell knows.

They're studying it because ..... that's what scientists do.

Finally, having researched and pondered this issue to the fullness of our not inconsiderable capabilities we arrive at the following conclusion.

Having been both warm and cold, it is our strongly held opinion that ...

We begin today in developing/establishing the platform upon which the Roanman candidacy for the office of President of the United States will stand.

And since I'm still feeling a hair run down and happen to have this bit of word art already completed, and not because I attach any special importance to this issue, I'll begin with "Gays In The Military".

I believe a decent enough interval has elapsed since the 2012 presidential election for me to announce my candidacy for the office of President of the United States in the upcoming 2016 presidential election.

Having taken care of that little bit of business, I'm taking a weekend off from the site as all this politicking and stuff has me worn out.

So ... once again in the words of both Douglass MacArthur and the Terminator.

And, as always when we take a little time off, we remind you of the wisdom of Sgt. Phillip Esterhaus.

That's good advice.

I think we've been plain enough in our opposition to the candidates for President being offered up by America's two great political parties.

We cheerfully acknowledge the liklihood that in addition to being deeply opposed to many/most/if not all of the policies put forward by President Obama, Mr. Romney and their respective party platforms, this may reflect a personal problem on our part as we have internalized ... and then some ... the following credo first presented by the beloved Groucho Marx.

So anyway, the libertarian/anti-war types have sniffed us out and have been bombing us with the stuff.

So to speak.

The following are some of our favorites.

We begin with Terry D's hands down favorite, which mostly just creeps me out.

Our strongly held opinion is that the next couple whatevertheyares accurately depict the overwhelming tone of the 2012 election.

This year, America will be voting against.

Conan get's it.

 America's contempt for the political class continues to grow. 

Which in the case of Vice President Biden, that contempt is well earned.

Speaking of War, some people are beginning to notice that the supposed anti-war left has been AWOL for the past four years and have drawn some conclusions.

Bastiat Institute and Philosoarapter have some not unreasonable doubts ... if you ask us ... about all of it.

Finally, a warning.

Be afraid ..... Be very afraid.