Screaming Headlines

“Tax bills in 2009 at lowest level since 1950”, screams a USA Today headline. And, in the article, we find this: “While spending is up, taxes have fallen to exceptionally low levels.” Ah, well, then there’s nothing to worry about… right? But wait -- if spending is up and taxes are down, where is all this money that is being spent coming from? You guessed it -- it’s either being borrowed (mostly from China) or it’s being made out of whole cloth -- or paper. Which means that either the national debt is sharply increasing, or the dollar is being sharply devalued, or both. And this is preferable to taxes? At least taxes are semi-honest… but won’t the national debt sooner or later demand tax hikes in order to at least pay the interest? And won’t devaluation lead to inflation, which is at least as destructive as high taxes? And, in fact, won’t the national debt encourage further devaluation, if not actual default? So who is kidding whom here?

And along those same lines, a good chunk of the “fix” for Greece’s financial woes is going to come from, guess who, good old Uncle Sam -- which means that money (as in “dollars”) is going to be “shipped” (really? Like in container ships?) over to Europe to help plug up the Grecian hemorrhage. But wait -- isn’t that the same money that’s already being devalued in order to help ease our own national debt? How is that supposed to “help” anyone in Europe? Stay tuned for more madness…

“Church of England opens way for women bishops” -- which is sure to alienate even more members of the Anglo-Catholic (AKA “high church”) and evangelical (AKA “really low church”) wings. I imagine that sooner or later the Church of England will consist of nothing but a handful of female bishops and a gaggle of female priests. But no parishoners. Which is, just possibly, exactly the way they want it.

“Jimmy Carter campaigns for grandson in Georgia race”, screams an AP headline. And, in the article, we find this: “… with the Carter name comes high expectations for success.” REALLY?? Now, whose expectations might those be? Certainly no one who managed to live through the Carter years . Are these people totally delusional or what? Oh yeah, I forgot…

“Study: Poor, minorities shift into suburbs.” “Educated whites find opportunities in cities.” And this, according to an AP article, is a bad thing -- at least for the suburbs. And the Brookings Institution is wringing its hands. Check out this crackerjack analysis: “Analysts attribute the racial shift to suburbs in many cases to substantial shares of minorities leaving cities…” That’s like saying the temperature is going up because it’s getting warmer. And people get paid for this? But wait, there’s more: “Whites, too, are driving the trend by returning or staying put in larger cities.” Ah! So it’s those mean, hateful white people, as usual. And I suppose the Brookings folks would be the last ones to remember why whites left the cities in the first place -- they were driven out by “urban renewal”. The best way to “renew” cities, according to the tyrants of the postwar era, was to drive out all the productive wage earners and replace them with non-productive wards of the state. Well, it “renewed” the cities, alright -- the way cancer, TB, and AIDS “renew” the human body. What we’re seeing now is a voluntary (I repeat, _voluntary_) return to the city of the whites who were driven out a generation or two back -- a sort of “reconquest” if you will. And I guess that fact that it’s not part of a government “plan” or “program” is what offends outfits like Brookings the most. All they can talk about is the “problems”, and the “race and age divide”, and the “cultural generation gap”, and other such nonsense. Funny how they never worried about the problems that might arise from ethnic cleansing of the cities, forced integration, forced busing, and all the rest of the enlightened, utopian plans that have turned many of our cities into battlegrounds and no man’s lands, which continue to astonish visitors from everywhere else in the world. Personally, I’ve always thought our cities were too good to be thrown onto the ash heap of history -- as the “urban renewal” geniuses seemed determined to do. I’m glad enough people agree with me to start making a difference, and reclaiming their rightful heritage.