It’s Friday, September 24th, 2021…but before we begin, Townhall.com‘s Katie Pavlich relays how another bit of Hunter’s uncanny business acumen has just come to light via Business Insider:

A New Hunter Biden Deal Has Been Revealed…in Libya

Nothing to see here folks, please move along.  Though it occurs to us if Hunter’s brain hadn’t been addled by crack and Heaven knows what other illicit substances, his keen legal mind and amazing business acumen (undoubtedly inherited from his father!) could have sealed his Libyan shakedown…er,…deal.  And he’d never have needed to take up painting.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, courtesy of the WSJ, Jason Riley offers a must-read summary of…

The Destructive Legacy of the Great Society

Government subsidies for antisocial behavior stalled decades worth of black progress.

The Democrats’ $3.5 trillion proposal to expand the U.S. safety net is being described as a make-or-break moment for the Biden presidency. Regarding electoral politics in the short term, that may well be true. But some of us are more concerned about what it could mean for the country beyond the next election or two.

Liberals view a larger welfare state as an unalloyed good, but what’s the track record? Entitlement programs were dramatically expanded in the 1960s in the service of a war on poverty, yet poverty fell at a slower rate after the Great Society initiatives were implemented, and overall dependency on the government for food, shelter and other basic necessities increased. According to Howard Husock, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of a coming book on housing policy, “The Poor Side of Town: And Why We Need It,” the median time a family spends in New York City public housing today is 19 years. And 10% of public housing residents in the city have been there for more than 40 years. Housing intended to help families through a rough patch has become a multigenerational trap for some.

Democrats are now aiming to create new entitlements and expand the existing ones, not only for the poor but also for the professional class. Workers making $200,000 a year would be eligible for a new national paid family and medical leave program. Earlier this year the American Rescue Plan Act expanded the child tax credit for households earning as much as $150,000. Liberals pitch these social programs in the name of helping underprivileged minority groups and reducing inequality, but the lesson of the 1960s is that government relief can put in place incentives that have the opposite effect.

Between 1940 and 1960 the percentage of black families living in poverty declined by 40 points as blacks increased their years of education and migrated from poorer rural areas to more prosperous urban environs in the South and North. No welfare program has ever come close to replicating that rate of black advancement, which predates affirmative action programs that often receive credit for creating the black middle class. Moreover, what we experienced in the wake of the Great Society interventions was slower progress or outright retrogression. Black labor-force participation rates fell, black unemployment rates rose, and the black nuclear family disintegrated. In 1960 fewer than 25% of black children were being raised by a single mother; within four decades, it was more than half.

Antisocial behavior is closely associated with family breakdown, so it’s no surprise that more fatherless homes led to higher violent crime rates. The criminologist Barry Latzer has noted that black male homicide rates had been falling in the 1940s (by 18%) and in the 1950s (by 22%), yet this trend would reverse itself beginning in the late 1960s and continue to worsen for nearly three decades. The political left likes to cite the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. But what about the legacy of the massive welfare-state interventions in the 1960s?

“The greatest twenty-five years of black progress after Emancipation itself came between the early postwar period and around 1973,” writes labor economist Richard Vedder in the current issue of the Independent Review. “The real median income of the black population more than doubled between 1948 and 1973, increasing an astonishing 3 percent per year. If average instead of medians are used to calculate real income, the increase was even larger.”

Another recent analysis of black upward mobility in the 20th century, by Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam and co-author Shaylyn Romney Garrett, reached a similar conclusion. “Overall, African American incomes rose relative to white incomes for the first two-thirds of the century,” they write, and “most scholars agree that income levels by race converged at the greatest rate between 1940 and 1970.”

The welfare state is often discussed in relation to its effect on racial and ethnic minorities, yet crime, single parenting and drug abuse also increased among poor whites in the aftermath of the Great Society. When the government indulges and subsidizes counterproductive behavior, we tend to get more of it. Aside from how all this indiscriminate government benevolence has affected individuals, there’s also the matter of its long-term effect on America’s standard of living. By undermining the development of human capital and allowing—even encouraging—larger and larger swaths of the less-productive population to live off their more-productive brethren, we risk exacerbating income inequality and nurturing class resentments.

Hard-left ideologues who want to turn the U.S. into Western Europe, and politicians eager to hand out goodies in exchange for votes, don’t much care about these trade-offs. But they’re relevant for anyone who wants to understand the relationship between social progress and government “help.

With very few exceptions, no Progressive in any position of real power is there to help anyone but themselves.  More on that later.

Since we’re on the subject of real racism, the New York Post‘s Kate Sheehy records how…

Critics claim ‘missing white woman syndrome’ has overshadowed these missing persons cases

“Most disappearance cases involving people of color quickly fall off the national radar, if they ever even make it that far — a racist double-standard considering the current Gabby Petito saga, critics claim.

“Missing white woman syndrome’’ — a term used to describe the perceived disproportionate attention paid to white females who disappear, as opposed to people of color — was trending on social media Tuesday as hordes of news outlets and local and federal authorities focused on the Petito case.

Petito, a 22-year-old white woman from Long Island, disappeared out West in late August while trekking around with her boyfriend Brian Laundrie, sparking a national manhunt and media frenzy.

“We would not know that Gabby Petito existed if she was Native American or black and not a pretty white blonde,’’ fumed Twitter user Hart-Van ‘n Leeu…”

We get the point, as we’ve frequently decried the seemingly unending attention paid Natalie Holloway and every young lady like her that’s followed, including Petito.

But here’s the juice: this isn’t about race, but ratings!!!  And if those like Hart-Van ‘n Leeu want to blame anyone, please start with the Dimocratic politicians overseeing the cesspools of Black-on-Black crime which are America’s inner-cities…then the Liberal-dominated media outlets which refuse to report anything that doesn’t increase their ratings.  Which encompasses anything other than pretty White blonds.

Next, in what has to rank as one of the most idiotic reactions to a demonstrably false narrative ever, NRO‘s Brittany Bernstein reports Progressive propagandist Jen…

Psaki Announces Del Rio Border Patrol Will No Longer Use Horses in Response to False ‘Whip’ Narrative

“White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced Thursday that Border Patrol agents will no longer be permitted to use horses to guard the border in Del Rio, Texas, after “horrific” photos emerged of agents swinging long reins while interacting with Haitian migrants.

The announcement comes after the media caused a frenzy by falsely portraying the videos and photos as showing agents hitting the migrants with whips. It was later revealed that the agents were in fact wielding the long reins that make it easier to maintain control of their horses, according to Border Control chief Raul Ortiz. Ortiz said that he did not believe that the reins had been used to strike any refugees and none of the photos or videos that have circulated of the interactions appear to show the reins making contact with migrants.

An unnamed Border Patrol agent told Townhall’s Julio Rosas that mounted agents often twirl their reins to keep migrants at a distance so they’re not crushed underfoot…”

Further proof, as if any were needed, truth to The Left is like…

Moving on, we offer a sextet of special selections certain to cater to inquiring Conservative minds:

(1). FOX informs us Iran’s Foreign Minister vowed to eliminate Zionism at UN Anti-Racism conference.  The U.N.: About as useful as a…

And each and every dollar we contribute might as well be…

(2). The WSJ‘s Dan Henninger insightfully observes while 46*’s speeches may be endless sources of humor, “do not fall asleep”, as his latest was a complete repudiation of the current U.S. economic system.  Biden is a Socialist; and never forget Socialists’ sole purpose in life is to enrich themselves off the labor and shared misery of others.

(3). Speaking of the Big Guy (Who, for his entire adult life has endeavored to emulate the lilies of the field: he toils not, neither does he spin!), also courtesy of the Journal, Kim Strassel reminds us former SecDef Robert Gates’ assessment of Biden having botched nearly every foreign-policy issue for 40 years is equally applicable to his domestic political skills, as the current party fight over its $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill is likewise a reminder that a man who spent a Senate career drifting with the Democratic tides is ill-equipped to step up with a vision that will unite battling factions.

(4). Then there’s this from NRO, as Paul Gessing sagely suggests though the present bears similarities to the tumultuous 1970s, this time the blame lies squarely with the man in the White House, making 46* worse than even Jimmy Carter.  As we’ve observed a number of times in the past, worse than even we imagined…and we’ve quite the imagination when it comes to the destructive abilities of Progressive politicians.

(5). In a related item, writing at Best of the Web, Jim Freeman tells us, based on a recent Pew poll, in addition to a rapidly sinking approval rating, 56% of Americans surveyed would not use the term “mentally sharp” and Joe Biden in the same sentence.  This includes 35% who think the term describes him “not at all well” and another 21% who say “not too well”.

(6). Meanwhile, according to the New York Post, even bumbling bureaucrats like Dr. Faux Chi have their limits, as leaked documents reveal about 18 months before the first COVID-19 cases emerged, scientists at the same ChiCom lab that gave the world the Wuhan virus wanted to genetically engineer coronaviruses that were more infectious to humans and then conduct experiments on live bats, but a Department of Defense agency rejected the funding proposal.  Sorry, but we’re still left scratching our head wondering why ANY U.S. government agency would provide funding to a foreign power inimically opposed to everything for which our nation stands…or once stood.

Seriously, did the thought never occur to these educated idiots the ChiComs might not think twice about using gain-of-function research funded by your tax dollars to create bioweapons which could then be used against their benefactors?!?  Then again, it apparently never occurred to Benedict Milley the PRC might use his heads-up the U.S. was planning a nuclear strike to launch a preemptive strike of its own.

We only ask so as to facilitate sending them back.

Which brings us, appropriately enough in the case of the first cartoon, to The Lighter Side:

Then there’s these from Ed Hickey…

…Speed…

…and the lovely Shannon…

…along with a related meme from the Penguin:

Finally, we’ll call it a week with another titillating tale torn from the pages of The Crime Blotter, as it appears…

Biden may owe up to $500k in back taxes

A report indicated that Biden improperly used ‘S corporations’ to avoid taxes on speaking fees and book sales

Sorry, kid…but it is.  In other words, while 46* wants to raise our taxes by over $2 trillion, claiming “the rich” don’t pay their “fair share”, in 2017, multi-millionaire Groper Joe, who’s never worked an honest day in his life, avoided his payroll taxes, the very SAME levies which fund Medicare and Obamacare. 

Further proof, as if any were needed, this isn’t a presidential administration: like those of William Jefferson Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama before it, it’s an ongoing criminal conspiracy!

Magoo

Video of the Day

Louisiana’s David Kennedy puts General Mark Milley’s treason in proper perspective. And no, whatever the Pentagon propagandist said, Milley’s duties do NOT include surreptitious contacts with anyone without informing the chain of command.

Tales of The Darkside

Why would Biden do this to his own country? Because he’s a Progressive, and Progressives are citizens of the world…a world in which they possess the power to order the lives of others to enrich themselves.

On the Lighter Side

Courtesy of Bad Bill, one heckuva shot.