MLK III Leaves MSNBC Host Toure Stunned With Comments on Blacks and the Tea Party

Martin Luther King III left MSNBC host Toure stunned on Friday when he told him it’s important for blacks to “be engaged with the Tea Party.”

King’s comments came after Toure asked if the Democratic Party has done enough to justify the overwhelming support it sees from the black community.

“The party does not do enough,” King replied.

He also said blacks are not a “monolithic people” and they should feel free to be Democrats, Republicans or independents. Further, it’s important that blacks “be engaged with the Tea Party” as well, King added.

“Why would it be important for us to be engaged with the tea party?” Toure replied, with a look of total confusion on his face.

(MSNBC)

“Because the only way you change is that you have to be at least communicating. If there’s no communication, then you can’t just let someone have an agenda,” King said. He also explained that his father, Martin Luther King Jr., would often meet with whites who were against equal rights for blacks to make sure there was a dialogue.

Predictably, another MSNBC host then asked if the Tea Party’s problem with Obama is based on his policies or “something else about him,” clearly suggesting his race.

Watch King’s response below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpt4xsTff2A

(MSN

(H/T: Mediaite, National Review)

This Is What Happens When You Leave Behind an Important Document From a Secretive Meeting of Progressive Donors

Democracy Alliance, a secretive organization that directs millions of dollars to progressive causes, tries its best to keep its members list and activities a secret.

But a document left behind after the group’s recent gathering at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Chicago may have undone years of discreet activity.

The confidential document, which was first retrieved and published by the Washington Free Beacon, contains a list of the group’s newest “partners” — members who must pay approximately $30,000 in annual dues.

Members must also donate at least $200,000 to approved progressive groups.

Democracy Alliance, which was founded in 2005 by Democratic strategist Rob Stein, does not publicly disclose details regarding its support for progressive organizations and its members are instructed to never speak about the group or its activities.

But the confidential document retrieved by the Beacon gives an inside look at some of the group’s newest “advisers” and “foundation participants,” a “who’s who” of labor bosses and top Democratic donors and business leaders.

Democracy Alliance doesn’t accept donations, the Beacon reported:

Instead, it solicits contributions from left-wing millionaires and billionaires, and serves as a ‘pass through’ between those donors and top liberal advocacy groups, including the Center for American Progress, Media Matters for America, and Democratic Super PAC Priorities USA.

The document reveals that labor unions have taken on a larger role in Democracy Alliance’s operations.

New members for 2014 include Noel Beasley, president of Workers United and an SEIU vice president, and Keith Mestrich, president of the union-owned Amalgamated Bank.

They are joined by other union heavyweights, including Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America, and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, who joined Democracy Alliance in 2013.

The Democracy Alliance document also reveals that Phillip Munger, the son of Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman and Warren Buffett lieutenant Charles Munger, has been brought on as a new partner.

Philip Munger, a professor at the New School in New York City, has donated more than $700,000 to Democratic and liberal groups since 1990 and even donated $46,000 while he was in college.

Munger is also recognized as being one of the “founding members” of Organizing for Action, the political advocacy group that grew out of Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns, having once donated $250,000 to the group.

Here’s a list of Democracy Alliance’s “new partners” for 2013 (via the Beacon):

• Paul Boskind: CEO of Deer Oaks Mental Health Associates and theater producer.
• Larry Cohen: President of the Communications Workers of America.
• Randi Weingarten: President of the American Federation of Teachers.
• George Kohl: Senior director of the Communications Workers of America.
• Michelle Ringuette: Assistant to the president of the American Federation of Teachers.
• Amy Goldman: Author, horticulturalist, and daughter of the late New York City real estate magnate Sol Goldman.

And here’s a list of Democracy Alliance’s “new partners” for 2014 (via the Beacon):

• Adam Abram: Founder of James River Group, chairman of Franklin Holdings, chairman of Piedmont Community Bank Holdings, former president of Adaron Group.
• Noel Beasley: President of Workers United, vice president of the Service Employees International Union, chairman of Amalgamated Bank.
• Keith Mestrich: President of Amalgamated Bank
• Philip Munger: New School professor, son of Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman Charles Munger.
• Colin Greer: President of the New World Foundation.
• Heeten Kalan: Senior program officer at the New World Foundation.
• Rick Segal: CEO of Seavest, Inc.
• Ryan Smith: Unknown. It was originally reported that Smith was the CEO of Qualtrics, but that was not the case.
• Henry van Ameringen: President of the Van Ameringen Foundation, son of Arnold Louis van Ameringen, founder of International Flavors and Fragrances.
• Dirk Wiggins: Founder of Code for Progress, former director of targeting for Field Strategies, former outreach director for the Florida Democratic Party.

Click here to read the full report at the Washington Free Beacon.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/05/06/this-is-what-happens-when-you-leave-behind-an-important-document-from-a-secretive-meeting-of-progressive-donors/

Progressivism and Unnatural Selection

It is ironic that Progressives identify their cause with the green movement and claim that their goal is a balance with nature, a logical and progressive change from the evils of capitalism to a pure and wonderful future that they won’t really define -- except to say it will be fairer.

Let’s examine the facts.

First, let’s examine the underlying foundation of Progressivism; that it is natural. Natural evolution, the constant evolution of life, is a process in which there is constant improvement. Species evolve in ways that make them stronger, smarter and better adapted to the environment. In other works, the more successful individuals and more successful species naturally tend to proliferate.

Progressives believe in the opposite. They genuinely believe that in human life, the more successful people or societies do so at the expense of others. They point to colonialism as an example. They believe successful countries get that way at the expense of weaker countries and then keep them down.

Let’s look further. Consider Asia in the last 70 years.

After the Second World War, Asia was in turmoil. Since then, successful societies have flourished for very similar reasons, by providing an environment more compatible with individual success, otherwise known as free enterprise. Societies that provided a more controlled, centrally planned environment have not succeeded as well. As in all things, these are relative, not absolute.

Consider Singapore, a tiny country. After WW2, Singapore was run by a government that learned to be strict in some ways, but allowed a great deal more individual freedom than her neighbors with regard to business. They put significant effort into improving education, infrastructure and finance. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than any country around it.

Singapore’s neighbors were all larger. They all have better natural resources. Singapore was not a military power and could not benefit from pushing around smaller countries -- it saw no “colonial” benefit.

Yet Singapore’s economy blew past Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia. This success was not “at the expense” of anyone.

Also consider Japan. After WW2, it was a pariah in the region. Its troops had left a trail of death, destruction and downright evil. But under a new government, one structured to allow for more individual freedom and free enterprise, it saw as much success in the next 50 years as any country has ever seen relative to its size, only limited by its size and excessive government control.

A review of all of the other countries in Asia shows that the more powerful the central government and the less it allowed free enterprise, the slower the growth. Some say that China is the exception, but once again consider size. China may have seen an enormous change since the government allowed more freedom, but the individual has not seen much of this success, even today. The average citizen in Singapore, Japan and South Korea enjoys a better life than the average citizen of China.

Let’s return to the subject. I ask you, is Progressivism more natural? What is Progressivism, at its core?

Progressives don’t paint a clear picture of life under their philosophy; they prefer to simply vilify “capitalism.” What is capitalism? A simple definition of capitalism is a society based on the control of money. But such a society has never existed, it is a figment of the imagination of Karl Marx and to a greater extent his devoted follower Frederick Engels, the greatest user of the word “capitalism.” They claimed a proper form of government, a communist government, would do away with this and create a better and fairer balance.

But every communist country that ever existed used currency. The difference is that they controlled production and freedom centrally -- and were inherently stagnant. Indeed, all communist countries failed. They failed simply because central control of a country by a select few people is inherently going to go bad.

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

In all groups of people, what “the future should be” varies widely. Few, if any, believe in a massive and uncontrolled free-for-all. Progressives believe in very powerful central governments, or even one massive world government. This is not terribly different from communism, at the core.

Normal everyday people, world-wide, want three things: peace, prosperity and a better future for their children. It really is as simple as that -- and having visited over 50 countries in my life I can confirm this to be true.

Some merely believe that huge corporations have too much power and should be limited. They believe in free enterprise, but with limits to protect individuals and the environment from excesses.

Others believe in varying degrees and flavors of strong central government. This may be religious or secular government. But all people desire fairness and opportunity.

Very few people, even those who identify with strong central government, seek a dictatorial and therefore unfair government. But history has shown that a government that does not allow individual success will suffocate. Why work harder than your neighbor for the same return? Where has progress ever come from other than inspired individual effort?

This is the core problem with Progressivism; it believes in contradictory and incompatible concepts: limited individual freedom, relative fairness, controlled opportunity and powerful central government.

None of these is has ever worked, none of these is evolutionary and none is the result of natural progress.

What we need is true progress. Progress towards a clean environment, a stable political world and constant improvement in all things are reasonable goals. It is against human nature for any of these things to occur with strong central government. History has shown the fallacy of this, people are not ants, for better or worse.

Progressives make the mistake of thinking humans, who can’t be trusted with the responsibility of controlling their own lives properly, can be trusted to operate a strong central government over others.

The chaos of democracy is the best bad form of government we have yet devised.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/05/progressivism_and_unnatural_selection_.html

5 Ways Liberals Hurt The Poor

Democrats have long since realized that people who are poor and dependent on the government will vote for them, even if it is their liberal policies that created the poverty and dependency. That's why every ghetto in America is controlled lock, stock, and barrel by liberal Democrats. Unfortunately, so many destitute Americans have yet to realize that liberal policies don't fight poverty; they maintain it.

Perhaps the worst thing about that is the betrayal of the poor people involved. Most of them are just having a hard time and looking for a little help to make life easier for themselves and their families. Little do they realize that the "help" the liberals are offering is akin to a drug dealer offering them a free sample. Not every liberal intends to "hook" the people they're "helping" on poverty, but they're certainly not very upset when it happens. The more poor dependent Americans there are, the more votes liberals get; the more needed they feel, the larger the budget becomes for the non-functional, big government programs they support.

Liberals have a lot of perverse incentives to keep as many Americans poor as possible and they respond to those incentives in a big way.

1) Overuse Of Welfare Programs: Americans are a generous people and most of us are fine with having a safety net that helps people who get down on their luck. The problem with liberals is that they do everything humanly possible to turn that safety net into a hammock. They oppose limiting the amount of time people can be on the programs along with drug testing and work requirements. Obviously, encouraging people to get comfortable on the dole is bad for the country, but it's even worse for the people involved. It's one thing to get in a tough spot, take assistance for a few months, and then get back on your feet. But, spending years or even decades on the dole? It's a trap that will make you dependent on the government while utterly ruining you as a human being. There was a time when even the staunchest liberals agreed with this sentiment. Conservatives disagree with Franklin D. Roosevelt on a lot of things, but he was absolutely right when he said,

The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole our relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of a sound policy. It is in violation of the traditions of America. Work must be found for able-bodied but destitute workers.

2) Supporting Illegal Immigrants Instead Of American Workers: While there are certainly Republicans who've been paid off by the business lobby to support illegal immigration, Democrats almost across the board are in favor of allowing as many illegal immigrants as possible into the country. If illegals were primarily taking jobs as reporters, college professors, and lawyers, liberals would ferociously oppose illegal immigration. But, since they're taking jobs that would otherwise go to poor Americans, liberals don't care. There are millions of poor Americans who are out of work simply because they can't work as cheaply as an illegal immigrant who doesn't have health care, doesn't pay car insurance, and who can lie on his taxes with impunity. Moreover, there are millions of other poor Americans who are making a few dollars less per hour because they're in a field full of illegal aliens who can work for less per hour because they don't have the same costs. Few policies would do more to put poor Americans back to work than getting rid of the foreigners who are breaking the law and cheating the system in order to steal their jobs away.

3) Fighting FOR Criminals, Not Victims: It's a disgrace that there are Americans who can't let their kids play in the yard out of fear of drug dealers on the corner, drive by shootings, and roaming gangs. Crime makes it harder to raise your kids, decreases property values, and stops people from moving freely around their neighborhoods. Rich and middle class Americans generally don't have big problems with crime because they don't have liberals "helping" them and so, they simply won't tolerate it. So, it's the poor Americans saddled with liberal "helpers" who suffer the most because of crime. Yet, liberals seem to spend all of their time worrying about THE CRIMINALS, not the people they're robbing, raping, and murdering. Liberals are always fighting to get criminals out of jail, looking to change the laws to make it harder to convict people of crimes, and trying to play up conflicts between poor communities and the police. Meanwhile, the poor Americans being menaced by these criminals are living in fear and desperately searching for jobs because businesses don't want to move into crime-ridden areas. It's not the gang bangers, drug dealers, and cop killers who deserve sympathy from liberals; it's the people they're victimizing. If only liberals could understand that.

4) Fighting To Keep Poor Americans Out Of Good Schools: Liberals have fought hard to keep poor Americans in lousy, failing schools. It certainly doesn't have to be that way. It was George W. Bush who greatly expanded access to charter schools via No Child Left Behind, a policy that has in practice mostly benefitted poor Americans. Furthermore, it's conservatives who support school vouchers that would enable poor Americans to send their kids to many of the same elite, private schools rich Americans choose today. On the other hand, liberals want poor kids trapped in failing schools because giving them the option to flee would take money out of the pockets of their teachers’ union allies. Liberals also fight tooth and nail to kill testing standards and keep lousy teachers in schools. Nobody who places a high value on educating our kids would do that. That's why If you're a poor American with a kid stuck in a terrible school system, the biggest hindrance you have to getting your child a better education is the American Left.

5) Killing Job Opportunities For The Poor: Ronald Reagan was spot-on when he said, "The best social program is a productive job for anyone who’s willing to work." Yet, liberals work incessantly to make it harder for poor Americans to find jobs. As the CBO confirmed, Barack Obama's proposal to increase the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour would cost 500,000 jobs. In D.C. big box stores like Wal-Mart were targeted with a new law that would force the companies to pay 50% above the minimum wage. As a result, Wal-Mart decided not to build six stores in an area which cost thousands of people much needed jobs. Because of Barack Obama's liberal policies, there are actually a million less Americans working today than there were the day he took officeeven though our nation's population has grown by almost six million people. Since the poor have less experience and fewer job skills, Obama's job-killing policies are tougher on them than any other group of Americans. We need to do everything possible to make it easier and more likely that businesses will hire poor Americans, not set up even more policies that keep them from getting jobs.

This is the Latest Dirty Liberal Plan to Go Around the Constitution, National Popular Vote Compact’ To eliminate electoral college

In 2000, George W. Bush won the election to the office of the presidency fair and square and completely in-line with the Constitution. Although he lost the popular vote by 0.5%, he won the electoral college votes by a margin of 271 to 266. Contrary to what many people believe, the election of the president and vice-president are both determined by votes from the electoral college. Still sulking from that loss, and perhaps looking for a back-up plan to their voter fraud methods, progressive left Democrats are ramping up their efforts to implement a new plan. They want to circumvent the Constitution by ditching the electoral college. Their movement is called theNational Popular Vote.

The attempt to ditch the Constitution, for what essentially amounts to mob rule, began long before the 2000 election. In 2006, Phyllis Schlafly wrote an article for the Eagle Forum on The Subversive Plan to Ditch the Constitution.

A plot is afoot to change our constitutional form of government by ditching the Electoral College. John Anderson, Birch Bayh and John Buchanan, three losers who were defeated in the 1980 Reagan landslide, are scheming to change our Constitution without complying with the amendment process.

Our Constitution requires that a president be elected by a majority of votes in the Electoral College, with each state’s vote weighted based on its population. But some who took an oath to defend our Constitution are plotting to undermine its essential structure by a compact among as few as eleven of the most populous states.

She continued by explaining the negative impact such a change would have on the vote of every day Americans.

The elimination of the Electoral College would overnight make irrelevant the votes of Americans in about 25 states because candidates would zero in on piling up votes in large-population states. Big-city machines would take over, and candidates from California or New York would enjoy a built-in advantage.

The Electoral College provides an essential safeguard against the democratic factionalism decried by James Madison in Federalist 10. The Electoral College ensures that no single faction or issue can elect a president because he must win many diverse states to be elected.

The NPV slogan “Every Vote Equal” is stunningly dishonest because the NPV proposal is based on legalizing vote-stealing and on changing the rules of presidential elections by a compact of as few as eleven states instead of the 38 states needed to amend the Constitution. NPV should be repudiated before it goes any further.

Not surprisingly, the states that have quietly worked to implement a plan to eliminate electoral college votes are all blue states.

The latest to join in on this ‘National Popular Vote compact’  is New York. According to silive.com, the Empire State is joining with California, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington in an agreement to award their electoral votes based upon the winner of the national popular vote. With New York’s votes in the mix, the far-left progressive plan to go around the Constitution has 165 of the 270 votes needed to pull off such a devious scheme. The ramifications for such a change are huge.

According to FOX News digital politics editor Chris Stirewalt this plan is one that will impact rural America and ‘subvert the will of the Constitution and the founders.” 

“This is disempowering to rural America and empowering to urban America,” he said, explaining that it amounts to a “hack” of the Constitution by people who don’t believe in the Electoral College.

Since there is not enough support in Congress to change the Constitution and officially end the Electoral College, this plan would allow popular vote advocates to work around it.

Stirewalt pointed out that this plan is part of a larger trend on the part of “frustrated” liberals who haven’t been able to bring about the changes they want.

“They are simply taking them. They are simply doing it and if people dissent and if people complain and if the stodgy, old Constitution gets in the way, if the fussy old Whigs in the Electoral College complain about it, too bad. Because they’re gonna hack the code and they’re gonna find a way to get what they want,” he said.

Remember the doozy of a lie that Obama told last week when he claimed ‘the Constitution is still intact.’ With Barack Obama as president and the left so power hungry that they will demonize every day Americans and subvert the system of government set up by our Founders, the Constitution is not intact; it is under attack. The left has long worked pervert the history of America to make people believe that the United States was set up as a democracy. It was not. As Stirewalt said, “the United States is not a democracy. This is a republic.” 

There is a difference.

http://www.tpnn.com/2014/04/22/this-is-the-latest-dirty-liberal-plan-to-go-around-the-constitution/

The High Cost of Liberalism

Trying to live in the kind of world that liberals envision has costs that will not go away just because these costs are often ignored by liberals.

One of those costs appeared in an announcement of a house for sale in Palo Alto, the community adjacent to Stanford University, an institution that is as politically correct as they come.

The house is for sale at $1,498,000. It is a 1,010 square foot bungalow with two bedrooms, one bath and a garage. Although the announcement does not mention it, this bungalow is located near a commuter railroad line, with trains passing regularly throughout the day.

Lest you think this house must be some kind of designer's dream, loaded with high-tech stuff, it was built in 1942 and, even if it was larger, no one would mistake it for the Taj Mahal or San Simeon.

This house is not an aberration, and its price is not out of line with other housing prices in Palo Alto. One couple who had lived in their 1,200 square foot home in Palo Alto for 20 years decided to sell it, and posted an asking price just under $1.3 million.

Competition for that house forced the selling price up to $1.7 million.

Another Palo Alto house, this one with 1,292 square feet of space, is on the market for $2,285,000. It was built in 1895.

Even a vacant lot in Palo Alto costs more than a spacious middle-class home costs in most of the rest of the country.

How does this tie in with liberalism?

In this part of California, liberalism reigns supreme and "open space" is virtually a religion. What that lovely phrase means is that there are vast amounts of empty land where the law forbids anybody from building anything.

Anyone who has taken Economics 1 knows that preventing the supply from rising to meet the demand means that prices are going to rise. Housing is no exception.

Yet when my wife wrote in a local Palo Alto newspaper, many years ago, that preventing the building of housing would cause existing housing to become far too expensive for most people to afford it, she was deluged with more outraged letters than I get from readers of a nationally syndicated column.

What she said was treated as blasphemy against the religion of "open space" -- and open space is just one of the wonderful things about the world envisioned by liberals that is ruinously expensive in the mundane world where the rest of us live.

Much as many liberals like to put guilt trips on other people, they seldom seek out, much less acknowledge and take responsibility for, the bad consequences of their own actions.

There are people who claim that astronomical housing prices in places like Palo Alto and San Francisco are due to a scarcity of land. But there is enough vacant land ("open space") on the other side of the 280 Freeway that goes past Palo Alto to build another Palo Alto or two -- except for laws and policies that make that impossible.

As in San Francisco and other parts of the country where housing prices skyrocketed after building homes was prohibited or severely restricted, this began in Palo Alto in the 1970s.

Housing prices in Palo Alto nearly quadrupled during that decade. This was not due to expensive new houses being built, because not a single new house was built in Palo Alto in the 1970s. The same old houses simply shot up in price.

It was very much the same story in San Francisco, which was a bastion of liberalism then as now. There too, incredibly high prices are charged for small houses, often jammed close together. A local newspaper described a graduate student looking for a place to rent who was "visiting one exorbitantly priced hovel after another."

That is part of the unacknowledged cost of "open space," and just part of the high cost of liberalism.

http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2014/04/22/the-high-cost-of-liberalism-n1827188/page/full

MSNBC Melissa Harris-Perry "You Can't Keep Your Crappy Plan! Just Deal With That!

MSNBC host and renowned deep thinker Melissa Harris-Perry has a solution to Democrats' Obamacare woes. Why are the law's supporters constantly walk on eggshells, she wonders, when they can simply assert their "swagger" by angrily berating victims of President Obama's lie of the year? Brilliant stuff. I hope Democrats are taking notes (via MKH):

Virtuosic messaging. Own the lie, while reminding betrayed consumers that their canceled plans were "crappy" anyway. People who liked their existing (and oftenless expensive) plans that covered their medications and preferred doctors are a bunch of rubes. MHP -- a great fan of the ultimate "junk coverage," by the way -- is here to set 'em straight. Alas, it seems that many Democrats are foolishly rejecting her sound advice. The New York Times reports:

 President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, the $1.4 trillion effort to extend health insurance to all Americans, is challenging the traditional calculus about government benefits and political impact. Even as Mr. Obama announced that eight million Americans had enrolled in the program and urged Democrats to embrace the law, those in his party are running from it rather than on it, while Republicans are prospering by demanding its repeal.

Maybe they're running because they know that pro-Obamacare "swagger" is a big political loser. The president says the debate is over, casting opponents of the law as heartless, spiteful know-nothings. Fresh polling once again confirms that thismay not be the wisest approach:

Clearly unpersuaded by the president, one Massachusetts Democrat isn't sugarcoating the predicament in which his party finds itself. Kudos to Mediaite'sNoah Rothman for flagging this:

 Speaking to Boston Herald Radio last week, the only member of Massachusetts’ all-Democrat congressional delegation to vote against the 2010 health care reform law, Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA), warned that the Obamacare — well, you know — is about to “hit the fan.” ... “There are parts of Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act, that were postponed because they are unpalatable,” Lynch observed. “As these provisions come into effect, the administration thus far is saying, ‘Gee, we really can’t handle this right now so we’re going to delay it.’” ... “We will lose seats in the House,” the Bay State congressman confessed when pressed on the likely political impact of the ACA. “I am fairly certain of that based on the poll numbers that are coming out from the more experienced pollsters down there. And I think we may lose the Senate.” Lynch did not mince words when he said that the Democrats’ dire political straits are “primarily because of health care.”

In short, some of the worst is yet to come -- and we're going to pay a price. But remember, the debate is over because Obamacare is on a "winning streak."

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2014/04/22/fox-news-obamacare-poll-n1827266