How Stupid Are Conservatives? This Stupid…

Fresh on the heels of the Faux News “Search for a white Trayvon”, the “Santa is white” debacle (parts 1 & 2), we have yet another conservative – who obviously due to a dramatic lowering of standards in order to recruit teachers …

Got a job as a teacher.

Encouraged by the race baiting tactics of the right, the KKK is indeed back…here…and here, and here.

Which gets us to the most recent conservative with “foot in mouth” disease.

Looking at the guys work history, it makes you wonder what a background investigation would show up…

Teacher suspended for alleged comment

A Fairfield Freshman School teacher has been suspended without pay and faces the prospect of dismissal after allegedly making racially insensitive statements to a student earlier this month.

Monday, the Fairfield Board of Education suspended science teacher Gil Voigt. He has 10 days to request a hearing before the school board or a referee.

Voigt, who is white, is accused of telling an African-American male student, “We do not need another black president” after the student said he would like to become president.

The incident occurred on Dec. 3, with several other students present,

according to a report from Assistant Superintendent Roger Martin, who conducted a disciplinary hearing on the matter.

It isn’t the first time the 14-year Fairfield teacher has been disciplined. He received a verbal warning for making an inappropriate racial comment in 2008. That year he also received a verbal warning for improper use of school technology.

Last year he received a verbal warning after allegedly calling a student “stupid” and belittling him. He received a written warning last month for failure to use the adopted curriculum.

“This is a rare occurrence. This is the first time I’ve faced it since being named assistant superintendent (in 2011),” Martin said.

In his report, Martin said he believed four students were interviewed who corroborated the student Voigt was speaking to.

Following a complaint by the student’s parents, the teen was removed from Voigt’s class, Martin said.

“We intend to uphold board policies and to hold teachers accountable for the essential functions of the teacher job description,” Martin said.

Voigt is accused of violating board policies related to staff ethics, staff-student relations and harassment.

Voigt was not present at the meeting and could not be reached on Monday for comment.

According to the report, Voigt said his statement was misquoted by the student, who he said was not a very good student and was troublesome in class.

Voigt has been a Fairfield teacher since 2000. Before that he taught seven years in North Carolina, two years in Florida and six years in the Cincinnati Public Schools.

 

 

Faux News Spurs Copycat “Knockout Game” Attack

The bigots at Faux News have done it again in creating a fake story about the “Knockout Game” to justify racism. A white “copycat” conservative punk moron has decided to duplicate the fictional ” massively growing crime wave” by beating up a 79 year old black man.  Hopefully this guy gets a real judge instead of a conservative appointed lackey, and gets some real jail time. It would be absolutely perfect if he got to share a cell for the next 10 years or so with a real black thug – perhaps one who committed the same crime. Maybe even get the chance to do a little “jailhouse community servicing” to open his eyes to the fact committing a crime and paying the price of going to jail, where almost all of the black thugs wind up …

Isn’t a vacation on the Med.

The real “Knockout Game”. These guys are trained professionals, do not try this at home!

White People Are the Victims of the ‘Knockout Game’ Even When They’re the Ones Punching

Did you hear? A white guy in Texas punched an elderly black man in the jaw, so of course he gets charged with a hate crime, because he’s white. White people arealways the victims. Also: the perpetrator allegedly used a slur and talked about attacking a black guy.

Happily, the “knockout game” phenomenon is coasting on fumes at this point, given that it’s 1) two months old and 2) not actually a real “trend.” Thursday’s announcement of federal hate crime charges injected a spark back into the idea, though, thanks to its cutting right to the chase: This is an issue of race.

The conservative Washington Times reports the new development, capturing a lot in one sentence. “Most knockout victims that have appeared in news reports have been white but the Justice Department said in this instance the victim was a 79-year-old black man, and stepped in with federal charges.” The response to the storyon Twitter, the Internet’s comments section, gives you a taste of precisely what you’d expect, outrage at a white assailant getting charges while a black man wouldn’t. The Washington Times‘ Emily Miller offered one of the more restrained responses: “So only white on black is hate?”

First, there are the specifics of Thursday’s case. The Justice Department “said in this instance” the victim was an elderly black man because, in this instance, the victim was an elderly black man. And the attorney general stepped in with federal charges because the perpetrator of the attack, Conrad Alvin Barrett, videotaped both the punch (which broke the older man’s jaw) and his motivation for it. That motivation was, allegedly, racial. The department’s press release alleges that Barrett at one point “makes a racial slur.” In another video, he is reported to have said, “The plan is to see if I were to hit a black person, would this be nationally televised?” After he hit the old man, Barrett is apparently heard yelling, “knockout!” in the video.

The Justice Department addresses the idea of this as a fad: “According to the complaint, the conduct has been called by other names and there have been similar incidents dating as far back as 1992.” This isn’t a 2013 thing where black people pick out white people to be punched. It’s a two-decade-old rarity that suddenly became a media sensation.

Let’s go back to the Times’ s Emily Miller. In November, Amrit Marajh was charged with a hate crime after punching a Jewish man in Brooklyn. Marajh is a person of color; his victim, white. The Washington Times covered it — the paper has written on the topic hundreds of times — but the Marajh story didn’t do nearly as well as today’s article.

Of course it didn’t. When the Times suggests that most “victims that have appeared in news reports” are white, they’re tipping their hand. Most coverage of the attacks has been driven by conservative outlets like the Times, which have not been shy about suggesting a racial disparity. We wrote about World Net Daily’s efforts to that end earlier this month. The attacks are always about race in media coverage because the alleged racial targeting of whites by blacks is the only reason people care about the attacks. It’s not necessarily a conscious filtering, but it is a filter that is applied.

The other recently popular knockout attack was a video usually given a title like “Knockout Game Goes Terribly Wrong.” That’s what BeforeItsNews called it, grabbing the video from WorldStarHipHop. In that video, a black man approaches a woman, who somehow — the tape gets blurry — gets the attacker on the ground and starts hitting him. Another man comes running in and kicks the alleged assailant. This video made it onto essentially every conservative outlet, as AboveTopSecretpoints out, all of which use the same frame for the story: black guy gets what’s coming. At last, a victory for the white team in this “knockout game” thing. (SeeReddit’s comments, if you dare.)

But! In a correction, Glenn Beck’s The Blaze adds a key detail: “Las Vegas Police Department spokesman Larry Hadfield told The Blaze Monday it appears the involved individuals had contact with each other before.” This isn’t a random attack, if it was even an attack at all. It’s dumb jerks being dumb jerks as dumb jerks have done for time immemorial. But by adding it into the “knockout game” genre — obviously incorrectly — and by picturing a white person fighting back against a black assailant, it got huge web traffic.

The weird thing about the Barrett attack — one of thousands of random attacks involving people of various races — is that it likely wouldn’t have happened without the media making “the knockout game” into an official sensation. Barrett allegedly wanted to see what happened when a white guy hit a black guy in the knockout game, because he hadn’t seen those covered by the media. Now he knows what would happen. And some of the same people that helped create the knockout game are, however indirectly, rising to his defense. He’s a victim, too.

 

The Rotten Apple Doesn’t Fall Far From the Tree – Ron/Rand Paul

Rand Paul is the brand new Republican Party outreach to the black community farce…

Ron Paul addresses the neo-confederate faithful Libertarians

 

The Michigan GOP is seeking to increase the party’s visibility in the Democratic stronghold of Detroit, 97.5 percent of which voted to reelect Barack Obama in 2012.

The solution? Open a new outreach center for Detroit voters, named the “African American Engagement Office.”

The GOP has tapped Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to headline the official opening of the office on Dec. 6, which will highlight “the Michigan Republican Party’s outreach efforts and our commitment to revitalizing Michigan’s urban centers,” according to the Eventbrite listing.

Paul will already be in Detroit to speak on the city’s bankruptcy crisis at the Detroit Economic Club, where he will “unveil his new legislative proposal to remove bankrupt Detroit and other economically blighted areas from poverty and the shackles of big government,” according to the Detroit Free Press.

Both the name of the office and the outreach strategy are already attracting their share of detractors. One Republican strategist told The Huffington Post that it sounds like Michigan Republicans are opening a “‘separate, but equal’ office in Detroit.”

Now – to most black folks who know of Rand’s daddy’s romance with white supremacists, and Rand’s opposition to the 1965 Civil Rights Act…

This is a bit like appointing your local KKK Leader as the Director of Diversity.

Perhaps why in his first speech in Detroit in the shiny new Minority Outreach Center… Only white folks showed up.

Not the least reason of which would be Rand’s ties to neo-confederates…

Rand Paul’s former staffer…”The confederate Avenger”.Sen. Paul says the white supremacist tendencies of Jack “The Southern Avenger” Hunter was just youthful indiscretion. In 2007 the former League of the South member wrote that if immigration levels remain unchecked, “A non-white majority America would simply cease to be America for reasons that are as numerous as they are obvious – whether we are supposed to mention them or not.” He was 33, and three years later he was co-writing Rand Paul’s book.

Ties to Secessionist Sympathizers? Don’t Worry, Rand Paul Will Still Endorse You

If there’s any Republican who needs to tread carefully when it comes to race, it’s Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. Between his erstwhile opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, his ties to Confederate sympathizers, and the baggage of his father’s past, pundits and observers are primed to pounce on any missteps, like his ill-received speech at Howard University this summer.

But Paul doesn’t seem to know that he’s on shaky ground with racial issues. To wit, earlier this fall, he endorsed Greg Brannon, a Republican primary candidate for Senate in North Carolina. As Molly Redden reports for Mother Jones, Brannon is far outside the mainstream of American politics. He opposes public education, rejects the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction over national law, and has lent his support to a pro-nullification rally held by the League of the South, a self-described “Southern nationalist” organization that is an obvious vehicle for neo-Confederate and white supremacist ideas.

Like Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Brannon sees the late Senator Jesse Helms, who represented North Carolina from 1973 to 2003, as a model for legislative behavior. “He was the one I most identified with,” said Brannon during a gathering this summer, “Senator No.” Helms, it should be said, was an unrepentant segregationist who used his power to institutionalize homophobia with attacks on gays and assaults on AIDS funding. To Helms, LGBT Americans were “weak, morally sick wretches,” and AIDS education was “obscene” and “revolting.”

Brannon stands with ugly forces in American life, and is the kind of far-right candidate who ought to be attacked and marginalized by Republican leaders. Like extremist candidates in Indiana, Missouri, and Nevada, his presence in the “tent” of the GOP is certain to alienate the voters who want to shift political gears without giving the car to a maniac. But, with endorsements from Rand Paul—“I support Greg Brannon, and expect him to be North Carolina’s next Senator”—and conservative activists like Red State’s Erick Erickson, there’s a fair chance he’ll make it through the primary and into the general election. And with a high profile comes a greater chance for disaster; given his history, I would be surprised if Brannon didn’t say something on race or gender that embarrassed him and his party.

Conservatives don’t just hate accusations of racism or racial insensitivity (that’s reasonable), they almost always deny that they have any substance, regardless of circumstance. It doesn’t matter that the right-wing indulged “birtherism” and called Obama a “food stamp president” and “Kenyan anti-colonialist”—it’s simply unreasonable to stamp those as racial. Likewise, when asked about his relationships with neo-Confederates and others on the far-right of American politics, Rand Paul has dismissed the questions as nonsense. “I don’t accept all of that and I don’t really need to or spend the time talking about all of that,” he said this summer in an interview with John Harwood of NPR, “If you want to talk about issues and what I stand for, I’m happy to, but I’m not going to really go through an interview reciting or respond to every yahoo in the world who wants to throw up a canard.”

Well, here’s the thing: If Rand Paul wants to avoid these questions, then he should avoid people who sympathize with white supremacists. And the same is true of the GOP writ large; if Republicans want to avoid accusations of prejudice or insensitivity, then the first step is to end the party’s association with lawmakers, officials, and activists who can’t help but indulge their worst instincts. After all, the Republican Party isn’t racist, and it shouldn’t be too hard to filter these people from the pool.

 

 

Congress Less Trustworthy Than Dirt

How low can they go?

A recent survey rated American’s belief in the honesty and integrity of people in a number of professions…

Congress came out next to dead last.

 

Good thing they didn’t include Pimps and Drug Dealers in the survey.

 

 

More of That Meghan Kelly “White Santa” Racism

This is how racism makes you stupid. A High School in New Mexico allowed the kids to come dressed one day as “Santa, elves, or a Reindeer”. A black kid shows up in a Santa outfit, and is criticised for dressing as Santa…

Because “Santa is white”.

Now never mind the fact that none of the Kids dressed as elves…Are the fictitious creatures…

Or the fact that any of the kids with their little antlers on are remotely related to genus Rangifer…

There is no “black Santa”.

This guy must have got his teaching certificate from on of those conservative Voucher schools.

Teacher Disciplined For ‘Santa Is White’ Remark

A New Mexico high school teacher has been disciplined after a parent says the man told his black son that Santa Claus is white.

Officials at the school in Rio Rancho, about 15 miles north of Albuquerque, announced Friday that the teacher recently was disciplined for his comments to the student, but they declined to say how, KOB-TV reported (http://goo.gl/GYqcJr).

The move came after students at Cleveland High School were told they could come to class dressed as Santa, an elf or a reindeer.

Michael Rougier said his ninth-grade son, Christopher, arrived wearing a Santa hat and beard, and the teacher asked the boy: “Don’t you know Santa Clause is white? Why are you wearing that?”

The teacher’s name was not released, and attempts by The Associated Press to reach school officials Saturday were unsuccessful.

Michael Rougier said the teacher’s comments enraged him.

“There’s no room for that in the classroom,” he said. “Whether this teacher felt Christopher may have been wearing this out of context, there’s no room for it. There’s just no room for it.”

The incident happened the same week that Fox News Channel’s Megyn Kelly said on the air that both Santa Claus and Jesus were white. Her comments drew national attention and prompted a slew of heated comments on blogs and social media sites.

A spokesman for Rio Rancho Public Schools said the Cleveland High School teacher knows he made a “dumb” mistake and has since apologized to the Rougier family.

Michael Rougier said he still has concerns. “If he has that attitude, how is it affecting students, studies, grading habits, trending toward Caucasian kids?” Rougier said of the teacher.

The teacher still works at Cleveland, but Christopher has been removed from his class, KOB-TV reported.

 

Speaker Boehner – “Tea Party Has Lost All Credibility”

The internal battle for the Republican Party heats up. Republican House speaker , John Boehner hammers the Tea Party over their intransigence, and refusal to participate in a functional Government…

 

 

Beginning to look like the Adults are taking charge again…

 

The Faux News Santa And Jesus

This one is unbelievable… Faux News and the “white” Jesus.

 

 

what Would You Do?

Black guys comes into a black barbershop to get his hair cut. A few minutes his girlfriend who is white comes in. A black woman Barber starts riffing on the girlfriend…

What would you do?

 

Tired of Obama Caving…

Been saying this for a long time. Obama’s fixation with bringing Rethuglys on board is a failure.

 

 

Mormons Make Their Historical and Current Beliefs Clear

 

One of the most beautiful Cathedrals in the Washington DC Area is the Mormon Temple which can be seen rising majestically over the Beltway near Bethesda.

 

Mormons and black folks did not enjoy each other’s company during the Civil Rights era. The center of the issue surrounded some beliefs by the Mormons which dated back from the time of their founding. The Church made a major change in 1978 to address that, but never discussed why those beliefs were in their liturgy to start with. In recent years the Church has been open to all.

The Church clears the air…

Mormon Church Explains Past Racism, Ban On Black Priests

After Mormon church leaders lifted the ban on blacks in the priesthood in 1978, church leaders offered little official explanation for the reasons behind the ban, saying only they received a revelation it was time for the change.

In the three decades since, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have struggled to understand the roots of the old ban and grappled with how best to respond to questions about the touchy historical topic.

Even as recently as 2012 — when the issue flared up during Mitt Romney’s run for president — the church said it has always welcomed people of all races into the church but that was not known precisely why, how or when the restriction on the priesthood began.

Now, finally, Mormons can point to a new 2,000-word statement posted on the church’s website that offers the most comprehensive explanation of why the church previously had barred men of African descent from the lay clergy, and for the first time disavows the ban.

The statement, posted Friday, says the ban was put into place during an era of great racial divide that influenced early teachings of the church. It pins the prohibition on an announcement from church president Brigham Young in 1852. Perhaps most importantly, it addresses the once widely held notion that blacks were spiritually inferior.

“The Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or that it reflects actions in a premortal life; that mixed-race marriages are a sin; or that blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else,” the statement read. “Church leaders today unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present, in any form.”

Mormon scholars and church members who have followed the issue closely called it a landmark moment.

“History and changes all happen due to time. This is way past due,” said Don Harwell, a 67-year-old president of a black Mormon support group in Utah. “These are the statements they should have made in 1978, but better late than never.”

Margaret Blair Young, an adjunct professor at Brigham Young University who made a documentary about the untold stories of black Mormons, called the new article a miracle. She said she’ll carry printouts with her to hand out and that she plans to call missionaries in Africa who are often asked about the reasons behind the old ban.

“I’m thrilled,” Young said. “It went so much further than anything before has done.”

Mormon church officials declined comment on the article but said it is part of a series of new online postings to explain or expand on certain gospel topics for its members. Other topics include, “Are Mormons Christian?” and one about founder Joseph Smith’s first visions.

Armand Mauss, a retired professor of sociology and religious studies at Washington State University, said the article is the most comprehensive explanation yet about the past exclusion of blacks from the priesthood and marks the first time the church has explicitly disavowed its previous teachings on the topic.

Mormon scholars over the years have written much of what is in the posting, but it is noteworthy coming from church headquarters in Salt Lake City, he said. He and other scholars were interviewed several months ago by staff from LDS Public Affairs in preparation for the new article, Mauss said, adding that it reflects a “new Church commitment to greater transparency about its history, doctrines, and policies.”

The LDS church has come a long way since the Genesis Group was founded in 1971, said Harwell, who converted to Mormonism in 1983. While he noted that he doesn’t speak for the church, he said he believes the next step is getting more black Mormons into church leadership positions. He serves as counselor to the bishop in his local congregation and can see how that is helping young church members change their perceptions. He didn’t question the timing of the explanation.

“Maybe the Lord just determined this is the time for it to happen,” Harwell said, “that this is when people are going to be able to accept it for what it is.”

Matthew Bowman, an author and assistant professor of religion at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, said the posting is being widely circulated in the Mormon blogosphere.

“They were a lot of people really hoping for this,” Bowman said. “Among the Mormon chattering classes, the statement is being taken as a pretty big deal.”

 

 

 

Prepare for “Conservageddon”!

At Nelson Mandela’s funeral today, President Obama shook hands with Raul Castro, brother of Fidel Castro, and current President of Cuba.

Get ready for some furious bloviating apoplexy from the right!

“Secret Muslim, terrorist, socialist, communist” time!

 

 

How Conservatives Destroyed Education in the US

Conservatives and the privatization to failure in the schools…

 

 

The Destruction of America

This is America on  conservatism.

They gave tax cuts to millionaires…

They gave tax cuts to billionaires…

They gave tax cuts to companies shipping American jobs overseas…

And then they “deregulated” Wall Street and the banks to steal.

Home of the Brave, Land of the Free, Land of Opportunity?

Not anymore.

A steady fall since Raygun economics.

The myth of the American Dream

The American Dream is supposed to mean that through hard work and perseverance, even the poorest people can make it to middle class or above. But it’s actually harder to move up in America than it is in most other advanced nations.

It’s easier to rise above the class you’re born into in countries like Japan, Germany, Australia, and the Scandinavian nations, according to research from University of Ottawa economist and current Russell Sage Foundation Fellow Miles Corak.

Among the major developed countries, only in Italy and the United Kingdom is there less economic mobility, according to Corak.

The research measures “intergenerational earnings elasticity” — a type of economic mobility that measures the correlation between what your parents make and what you make one generation later — in a number of different countries around the world.

Economists aren’t certain exactly why some countries have a greater degree of mobility than others, but they do point to certain similarities.

Greater current inequality: The more unequal a society is currently, the greater the chance that the children will be stuck in the same sphere. This is because wealthy families are able to provide things like tutors and extracurricular activities — and the time to pursue them — that poorer families often cannot.

Also, education matters a lot more now than it did 100 years ago in terms of getting a good job.

“The rich can pump a lot more money into their kids’ future,” said Corak.

This helps explain why counties like China, India and many South American nations also exhibit relatively little economic mobility.

Families: Having a stable home life is also associated with the ability to climb the economic ladder, said Corak. The United States tends to have higher rates of divorce, single-parent homes, and teenage pregnancy than many other industrialized counties.

Social policies: Counties that redistribute wealth — through, say, higher taxes on the richand more spending on the poor — tend to have greater social mobility, said Francisco Ferreira, an economist at the World Bank.

This is especially true when it comes to education spending. Critics have long contended that the U.S. system for funding education — where school funding is largely based on property taxes — perpetuates inequality far more so than a system that taxes the whole country for schools, then redistributes that money to the districts that are most needy.

If why Americans have a harder time making it into the middle class is a bit of a mystery to economists, why Americans cling to the belief that it’s still easy to do is even more baffling.

It could be because, during the late 1800s and early 1900, the United States was a much more mobile country than Britain, said Jason Long, an economist at Wheaton College in Illinois.

“It’s clear that Americans still believe that America has exceptional mobility, and that’s not true,” said Long. He calling it “vexing” that “lots of people could be systematically mistaken about verifiable, factual information.”

But no society has total mobility. Class is always going to be somewhat correlated to one’s upbringing, Corak noted.

 

Mandela’s Legacy

If you have been close to any News source today then you know that ailing former leader of South Africa Nelson Mandela has passed away.

A lot of people will be talking about his life and struggles, and apt comparisons to Ghandi and MLK – but one of the key things that probably won’t be discussed much is his accomplishments in modernizing and opening SOuth Africa’s economy to the formerly oppressed. That may well be his greatest accomplishment – to mold a country back together after a century or more of dysfunction …

During Apartheid the South African economy was held up by the twin mineral riches of gold and diamonds. Unfortunately those mines are pretty much played out. Besides trying to create a system wherein black Africans shared in the economy with their white counterparts the country needed to restructure the basis for i’s economy in terms of producing new goods to trade. Doing so meant breaking up the Apartheid Plantation system wherein whites owned 95% of the arable land in the country, slicing off a portion (not all) of these holdings into community corporations which could develop businesses. This launched the South African wine business into world competitiveness. It also allowed the country to develop regional trade relationships for manufactured goods and agricultural products. The result was that the income level of both white and black South African rose significantly.

The country still has a long way to go. One of the principal problems is a massive influx of immigrants from other parts of Africa who want to share in South African’s success. The formerly black Township of Soweto swelled from 3 million to nearly 20 million  people today in the last 15 years. The result of this is a 25% unemployment rate, despite a relatively healthy economy.

Rest in Peace President Mandela, and look proudly what your country has accomplished, your Long Walk is ended.

Remembering Nelson Mandela’s Unsung Economic Legacy

Nelson Mandela, who died Thursday at age 95, was the most important leader in South Africa’s history and one of the global giants of his time. What people often overlook, however, is the role Mandela played in building up Africa’s largest economy. Nearly as consequential as Mandela’s moral example was his skill in managing the transition from apartheid without widespread violence, repression, or economic collapse.

Mandela believed strongly in the link between economic and political progress. Soon after his release from prison, Mandela argued that there must be “a fundamental restructuring of our political and economic systems to ensure that the inequalities of apartheid are addressed.” At the core of white minority rule had been the “homelands”: a system that kept almost half of South Africa’s population confined to semi-independent or supposedly sovereign states without the freedom to move or look for jobs in the rest of the country. The collapse of apartheid meant the end of those restrictions. The myriad legal restraints that prevented blacks and “coloreds” from gaining promotions—or access to jobs at all—were removed as well. From a state made up of 11 “countries” and three legally distinct racial groups—all with markedly different rights to move, work, and invest—South Africa became one economy. Think of it as opening borders to mass migration under the worst possible circumstances.

The dismantling of the homeland system, however, was by no means a certainty in the early days of Mandela’s presidency. The supposedly “sovereign” homeland of Bophuthatswana, home to 2.5 million, and semi-autonomous Kwazulu both threatened civil war over the dismantling of the homelands.  Relations between the African National Congress and the Zulu Inkatha Freedom party have remained tense—and sporadically violent—since the end of apartheid. But national unity and economic stability were both preserved largely through negotiation and compromise.

South Africa’s gross domestic product growth rate, meanwhile, picked up considerably under Mandela. Economic growth rose from less than 1.5 percent from 1980 to 1994 to slightly under 3 percent from 1995 to 2003. Despite the sudden influx of internal migrants with the legal right to compete equally for jobs, average personal incomes for white South Africans increased by 62 percent from 1993 to 2008, according to University of Cape Town economist Murray Leibbrandt. Average incomes for Africans themselves increased even faster—by 93 percent over that period.

As educational opportunities expanded, secondary enrollment rates increased from 50 percent to 70 percent from 1994 to 2005. The government also rolled out a range of infrastructure services: The proportion of the country that cooked using electricity from the mains climbed from 45 percent in 1993 to 73 percent by 2011, for example.

South Africa has become an increasingly important source of economic opportunity for its neighbors. South African investment accounts for around 70 percent of intra-regional investment flows. Imports from the Southern Africa Development Community—the regional trade block which South Africa joined upon its independence—climbed from $16.3 billion in 1993 to $68.7 billion in 2006. The number of migrants in South Africa—nearly all from other countries in the region—increased from 3.3 percent to 3.7 percent of the population between 1990 and 2010. There are now approximately 3.3 million SADC nationals living in South Africa; remittances from those migrants back to their home countries amount to close on $1 billion a year, according to South Africa’s FinMark Trust. The trust reports a 2005 survey of Zimbabwean remittance recipients in which more than half of respondents “agreed that they would have grown sick with hunger” in the absence of remittance payments.

Some tragic mistakes were made by President Mandela and his successors. The HIV/AIDS crisis and the government’s late and sporadic response to it shaved years off life expectancy. In 1993 4 percent of pregnant women in the country were HIV-positive. That climbed to 28 percent 10 years later, before finally leveling out. Today, a little more than one in 10 of the population is HIV-positive. Unemployment has remained stubbornly high—around 25 percent—and the gap between rich and poor is still wide. In 1993, the average white had an income more than nine times the average African. By 2008 that had dropped—but only to a little less than an eightfold income gap according to analysis by Leibbrandt.

Progress against poverty was even slower than these figures might suggest. That’s because inequality within the African population grew rapidly for the first decade of independence—a trend arrested only by the rapid expansion of social safety net programs in the last few years. (About 30 percent of South Africans benefited from social grants in 2010—up from 13 percent in 2002). Poverty in South Africa remains almost uniquely an African phenomenon. All but six percent of whites have piped water in their homes, for example, while two-thirds of Africans lacked access to it.

It’s worth considering the alternatives. At independence, South Africans looked north to Zimbabwe as a reasonably successful model of how things could work out after a difficult transition to majority rule. They’re extremely lucky that South Africa, under Mandela’s guidance, took a different path. Starting in the 1990s, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe ordered land “reforms” that took property from white farmers and awarded it to his cronies and henchmen, slashing output as a result. By the turn of the century, Zimbabwe’s inflation rate was heading over 100 percent; by 2006 it would top 1,000 percent. Zimbabwe’s economy remains in a state of punch-drunk torpor.

Some may be disappointed that Mandela failed to create an African lion to challenge the East Asian tigers in terms of growth and poverty reduction. But the nonviolent absorption of a considerable majority of the population into an economy from which they had previously been excluded, all while incomes and access to services improved and civil rights were respected, was an incredible accomplishment—one that owes much to Mandela’s leadership. Let’s hope his successors preserve that legacy.

 

Republican Rep – “Middle Easterners Are All Liars”

In the next round of “Lets piss off everybody in the world except old white guys who watch Faux News”. This time Rep Duncan Hunter (R-Cal) takes a shot at those “A-rabs”, accusing everyone in the Middle East of being liars…

 

GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter: ‘It Is Part Of The Middle Eastern Culture’ To Lie

During a Monday interview on CSPAN, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) said “it is part of the Middle Eastern culture” to lie.

“In the Middle Eastern culture it is looked upon with very high regard to get the best deal possible, no matter what it takes, and that includes lying,” Hunter said.

When asked if he meant that “all Middle Eastern countries are this way,” Hunter reiterated his point.

“Yeah, that’s part of Middle Eastern culture. They like to barter there,” Hunter said.

Hunter did finally acknowledge he was making a generalization after calling the Iranian government “liars.”

In an email to TPM, Joe Kasper, Hunter’s director of communications, said the congressman’s comments were only in reference to Middle Eastern leadership and not the Middle East as a whole.

“I recall when asked to specify on one of the issues, he said the goal is to get the best deal in general terms,” Kasper told TPM. “But to be specific, he was talking about the political culture.”

This isn’t Hunter’s first questionable statement. In June 2010, Hunter said he would support deporting U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants, saying “it takes more than walking across the border to be an American citizen,” and he alsocriticized the fight to repeal “don’t ask don’t tell,” saying it would open the “military to transgenders, to hermaphrodites to gays and lesbians.”

Hunter also told CSPAN this week that he believes the United States should use nuclear weapons against Iran if necessary.

“I don’t think it’s inevitable but I think if you have to hit Iran, you don’t put boots on the ground, you do it with tactical nuclear devices and you set them back a decade or two or three,” he said. “I think that’s the way to do it with a massive aerial bombardment campaign.”