Race baiting broadcast agitators like Beck and Rush Limbaugh have their audiences believing the factually flawed foolishness that the reason they are falling behind economically is because the federal government is fawning over blacks lavishing them with unearned benefits.
The reason for the loss of jobs, homes and dreams of comfortable futures driving white working class (and middle class) ire is not benefits to blacks but naked greed on Wall Street and in the suites of mega-corporations that triggered America's economic collapse.
Does it need stating that Wall Street and corporate suites are not places infested by non-whites forced into positions by affirmative-action? Black folks didn't force lobbyist fretted elected officials on Capitol Hill to approve tax breaks to U.S. corporations that off-shore jobs.
Last year the two states with the highest rates of foreclosures were Nevada and Arizona -" not places with huge masses of financially dead-beat blacks dragging those states down economically. The black population of Arizona, for example, is 4.4 percent.
Currently, the city ranking third on the nation's foreclosure topping list is Modesto, Ca a town with a four percent black population. Even if every black homeowner in Modesto was in foreclosure (which is not true) that city's list topping status would still involve large numbers of whites.
The Bush Administration successfully blinded many to the reality of its tax breaks benefits.
While those tax breaks put a few hundred dollars into the pockets of the lower two-thirds of American taxpayers, fully one-third of the benefits went to the wealthiest one percent.
And those who were enriched by the Bush tax breaks DID NOT put that money into investments or purchases that trickled down to help Main Street with more jobs. The Wall Street Journal, in a January 2009 article, reported that the Bush administration registered the "worst record for job creation" of any President since the late 1940s.
Two recent studies graphically show how persons of all colors living on Main Street and its side avenues are losing both economically and educationally.
One study charts the disturbing rate of persons with high school diplomas who are failing to pass the armed forces admissions test.
Places like Washington, DC, Louisiana and Mississippi have the nation's high failure rates.
For most Tea Party-types that failure rate is easily explained by the presence of large numbers of blacks in those jurisdictions"blacks who are, well, according to widely believed conservative dogma, are intellectually inferior.
But in fact, the same Educational Trust Fund study of those who are not passing the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, also found a 12 percent failure rate among whites in Idaho and an 11.2 percent rate among whites in Wyoming -" two states with black populations of less than one percent.
The failure rates for high school grads from Idaho to Mississippi to Wyoming reflect fundamental failures in the U.S. education system, failure not related to intellectual capabilities tied to skin color.
The nation's economic meltdown is now exacerbating those structural failures, as states drastically slash funding for education at a time when improved education is urgently needed for both economic recovery and increasing global competitiveness.
Idaho, for example, is among dozens of states cutting funding to primary, secondary and college education.
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