Jim Schutze on the New Black Panther Party

February 1st, 2012

I must admit that I have not kept up with the doings of the New Black Panther Party. I knew of the Philadelphia voter intimidation case, and involvement in the various corrupt practices the likes of ACORN and their ilk get up to (voter fraud, etc.). And it doesn’t surprise me that the New Black Panther Party might be pretty weird, since the original Black Panthers were quite weird themselves. (Search for “Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, bullwhip”…but not while at work or eating.)

But I didn’t realize just how weird until I read this Jim Schutze piece. (Schutze was the source for this critical look at Tom Leppert’s term as mayor of Dallas.) It turns out that Dallas City Council member John Wiley Price has a protege named Aaron McCarthy (aka Aaron Michael) that Price wanted placed on the “homeland security advisory committee” (“whatever the hell that’s supposed to be” says Schutze). And it turns out that Aaron McCarthy is a member of the New Black Panther Party.

And what is it the NBPP believes? Well, hold on to your hats for this quote from NBPP leader Khalid Abdul Muhammad, speaking at a protest in Baltimore, Maryland, February 19, 1994: “Our lessons talk about the bloodsuckers of the poor. … It’s that old no-good Jew, that old imposter Jew, that old hooked-nose, bagel-eating, lox-eating, Johnny-come-lately, perpetrating-a-fraud, just-crawled-out-of-the-caves-and-hills-of-Europe, so-called damn Jew.”

Wow. Even by the very low standards of Black Nationalist rhetoric, that’s a pretty breathtaking dose of Julius Streicher by way of H. Rap Brown antisemitism. If I put that in some of my fiction, an editor would reject it as being an unbelievable caricature. Hell, I think Al Sharpton would send that back to his speechwriter as being beneath even his standards of subtlety and tact.

But wait! There’s more where that came from! Take a look at this fine, grade-A rant from King Samir Shabazz, head of the NBBP Philadelphia chapter:

I hate white people. All of them. Every last iota of a cracker, I hate it. We didn’t come out here to play today. There’s too much serious business going on in the black community to be out here sliding through South Street with white, dirty, cracker whore bitches on our arms, and we call ourselves black men. … What the hell is wrong with you black man? You at a doomsday with a white girl on your damn arm. We keep begging white people for freedom! No wonder we not free! Your enemy cannot make you free, fool! You want freedom? You going to have to kill some crackers! You going to have to kill some of their babies!

You might think these are just some made-up quotes from a random weekly alternative newspaper. (And I would agree that anything that appears in The Dallas Observer should be taken with a grain of salt unless verified elsewhere.) But no, those quotes are directly from the leftist-friendly and conservative-hostile Southern Poverty Law Center, and you can be pretty sure they’re not just whistling Dixie.

While these are particularly virulent quotes, how many times has the media just decided to ignore the latest racist or antisemitic rants from the black community? (Here’s one from today of a black radio host refusing to shake the hands of a black GOP candidate because he doesn’t want her “whiteness” to rub off on him.) How many times has the MSM passed on reporting on corruption and cronyism in the black political community out of political correctness, or because black America is such a reliable vote farm for the Democratic Party?

It doesn’t fit the narrative.

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Posted in Democrats, Media Watch, Texas | 1 Comment »

Leppert Has Poor Fundraising Quarter, Releases Taxes

February 1st, 2012

Tom Leppert only raised $387,000 from donors in Q4 plus threw in another half million of his own money. That’s down significantly from the $640,000 he raised from donors in Q3, which was down from the $750,000 he raised from donors in Q2, which, in turn, was down from the $1 million from donors he raised in Q1 of 2011, when he first jumped into the race. That can’t be an encouraging trend-line for Team Leppert, since he can’t self-fund at the same clip David Dewhurst can.

Leppert also released his taxes for the last three years, which is better than David Dewhurst’s two, but worse than Craig James and Ted Cruz’s five. The Statesman summary: Leppert’s “returns showed adjusted gross income of $1.5 million in 2008, $1.28 million in 2009 and $443, 194 in 2010. In all three years, he paid effective tax rates of more than 21 percent.”

I couldn’t find where Leppert’s returns were online, so I just sent off a query to them.

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Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas | 1 Comment »

California: Broke Again

February 1st, 2012

“California will run out of cash by early March if the state does not take swift action to find $3.3 billion through payment delays and borrowing, according to a letter state Controller John Chiang sent to state lawmakers today.”

Remember this the next time some liberal says that Texas has a budget crises “just like California.” We don’t. The Texas budget battle was like a husband and wife arguing over what to cut back from the household budget to keep putting money in the kids’ college fund. California’s budget crises is like two junkies arguing over whether to sell the baby’s insulin to buy more crack. Texas has never had to worry about whether the lights will stay on or whether the checks the state government writes will bounce or not. Nor will it, as long as the fiscal discipline that comes from having conservative Republicans in charge of the House, Senate and the Governor’s Mansion remains in effect.

The big government, high tax, closed-shop, heavily regulated blue model doesn’t work any more, and whenever you hear that Texas should embrace the California model, what they’re really saying is that big government is so awesome its worth the long-term risk of default and bankruptcy to implement. It isn’t, and it’s not.

(Hat tip: Instapundit Glenn Reynolds.)

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Posted in Budget, Texas | No Comments »

Texas Republican Party on Redistricting Lawsuits State of Play

January 31st, 2012

A long but informative breakdown of where things stand. The bottom line: The cases are still up in the air, Texas GOP is not directly involved in talks, and February 6 is the last day the case can be resolved and still have an April 3 primary.

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Posted in Republicans, Supreme Court, Texas | No Comments »

Texas Senate Race Update for January 31, 2012

January 31st, 2012
  • A testy exchange between Ted Cruz and Tom Leppert at last week’s Texas Republican Assembly Biennial Endorsing Convention Biennial Endorsing Convention on Leppert’s gay rights parade and ACORN baggage that I, Matt Dowling and whoever was behind the now-silent Race to Replace KBH dug up.

  • Last week Ted Cruz was on the Glenn Beck Show:

    Glenn Beck: “There’s no way you’re ever going to get elected. You make too much sense.”

  • Cruz was also named as one of the Top Ten Conservative Challengers in Texas by New Revolution Now.
  • Craig James appeared on WFAA (again, apologies for their crappy, non-YouTube video embedding):

  • Ted Cruz, Lela Pittenger and Ben Gambini all appeared at the North Shore Republican Women’s forum in Montgomery County.
  • Craig James is just fine with a later date for the primary. That piece isn’t particularly information, but I thought I would put it up since they do actually manage to mention all the Republican and Democratic candidates filed for the race, a sharp contrast with other news stories I could name…
  • The Texas Association of Business will have another Senate candidate forum in Austin tomorrow from 200-3:30 PM. Scheduled to attend are Ted Cruz, David Dewhurst, Tom Leppert and Craig James. I’ve been sending email back and forth with the James campaign to try a find a time to interview him while he’s in town, but it doesn’t look like we’ll find one that matches both our schedules. (It’s a busy time for my day job.) So we might end up doing an email interview instead.
  • The National Association of Realtors endorses Dewhurst. I’m sure this is a shocking turn of events completely unforeseen by anyone following the race.
  • Texas Sparkle lends her blog to Kevin Jackson so he can make the case for Craig James. His upshot seems to be that James is a tough competitor. Well, great. But getting your chin stitched up without anesthetic is probably a skill that will never be needed on the senate floor, and Mr. Jackson’s piece seems to be devoid of any actual discussion of political positions.
  • The AP takes a look at three of the five Democrats in the race.
  • Of them, Paul Sadler gets endorsed by the AFL-CIO. So that’s a second traditional Democratic interest group Sadler has in his corner along with the legacy news media.
  • Profile of Democratic candidate Jason Gibson. “Gibson considers himself a mainstream Democrat who believes in lower taxes and efficient government and who supports the Second Amendment. He’s pro-labor, he said, with an abiding interest in worker safety, but still is working to fill in the blanks on most issues. Jobs and the economy, he said, are key. He has hired several well-regarded campaign consultants and has said he is willing to spend into the seven figures.”
  • Glenn Addison raised $17,606 in Q4. That’s down significantly from the $35,059 he raised in Q3.

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    Posted in Austin, Elections, Guns, Media Watch, Republicans, Texas | No Comments »

    Syrian Rebels On Outskirts of Damascus

    January 30th, 2012

    What the headlines says, although they were repulsed.

    If President Hamlet was thinking about helping topple Assad, now would be a Real Good Time to jump off the fence.

    Plus, unlike Libya and Egypt, not only would it be very hard for the next government to be worse than the current one. Plus it would be a blow to Iran and Hezbollah, and thus would dramatically improve the possibility of real peace and a stable government in Lebanon.

    (Hat tip: Michael Totten)

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad | No Comments »

    Dewhurst, Cruz Release Tax Returns

    January 30th, 2012

    I had both a wedding and a book release party to attend this weekend, so I haven’t had time until today to note that David Dewhurst and Ted Cruz have followed the lead of Craig James in releasing their tax returns.

    The Dewhurst campaign announced they were releasing two years of tax returns (plus estimates for 2011)…and then failed to link to the returns from the announcement. (Perhaps it’s up somewhere on the Dewhurst site, but the lack of a press or social media contact listing makes such information difficult to ascertain.) They can be found at this Texas Tribune page. The Dewhurst campaign seems entirely too comfortable with letting the MSM continue in their role as information gatekeepers rather than allowing voters to access information directly.

    And here’s the Tribune’s summary of those documents: “Dewhurst reported a total income of $1.01 million and tax payment of $281,188 in his 2010 report, and a $1.4 million loss and tax payment of $443,646 reported in his 2009 report.”

    The Cruz campaign followed suite by releasing five years of tax returns, which can be found here. And here are links to the individual years:

  • 2006
  • 2007
  • 2008
  • 2009
  • 2010

    • (To be fair to the other candidates, I must note that there seems to be no way to find this from the Cruz website itself. However, unlike Dewhurst, the Cruz campaign is much better at giving contract addresses for the campaign team.)

    Once again the Texas Tribune provides the too-lazy-to-flip-through-tax-forms overview: “Over the past five years, Cruz has increased his earnings with every filing. In 2006, he reported an income of $347,716. In 2007, that increased to $395,494. It jumped to $780,198 in 2008, and to $1.5 million in 2009.” Good for him. They also go on to note “With Cruz’s disclosure, this leaves only former Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert among the major Republican U.S. Senate candidates who has yet to release his tax returns.” The Leppert campaign has promised to do so, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it takes a few days to dig out and digitize his tax returns.

    If I have time (a commodity in short supply right now), I’ll try to dig through the James, Dewhurst, and Cruz returns for nuggets of insight. Kudos to all three of the candidates for releasing their tax forms, and especially to James for getting the ball rolling.

    No word on whether any of the Democrats in the race will follow suit. Maybe no one has asked them yet…

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    Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas | No Comments »

    EuroDoom Roundup: Waiting for the Inevitable Greek Default

    January 30th, 2012

    You know the problem with doing one of these roundups on the European Debt Crises? I can search for “Euro” just about anytime of the day and night on Google News and come up with a dozen things I could potentially include. So just consider this a Whitman’s European Despair Sampler of possible bad news, as there’s a lot more where this came from:

  • European Finance Minsters on Greece’s latest bond offer: REJECTED.
  • “A Greek Default: It’s a-Comin'”.
  • In exchange for bailing out Greece yet again, Germany wants Greece to cede control over its tax rates and budget to an EU commission (i.e., Germany). It’s almost touching, this German naivety that Greeks can actually be compelled to obey German laws when they can’t even be compelled to obey Greek laws even now. But despite the fact that such government dictates would be ignored just like they are now, Greeks are still furious at the proposal. (Hat tip: Ace.)
  • And if Berlin doesn’t get to call the tune? “Germany and the Netherlands are likely to quit the eurozone rather than swallow an indefinite number of ‘unrequited transfers’ to the union’s crisis-stricken nations.”
  • And even if a deal is reached, it will probably trigger credit default swaps.
  • And if Greece doesn’t blow up the Euro, Portugal will.
  • Fitch downgrades Spain, Belgium, Italy, Slovenia, and Cyprus. (Hat tip: Ace, again.)
  • What will European currency look like after a Euro-zone breakup? Like this.
  • Another month, another EuroZone bailout fund. The rules for the New and Improved Euro Bailout Fund is: 1. “Access [will] be made conditional on signing a new treaty on fiscal discipline.” 2. “Countries representing 85 percent of the fund’s capital [will make] decisions instead of unanimity among the eurozone 17 – will only apply to authorise ESM loans from existing funds.” So 1.) We get an entire new set of fiscal discipline guidelines for the PIIGs governments to ignore, and 2. Germany will call the tune, and the rest of the Eurozone will dance. At least until the next shuffling of the fiscal deck chairs.
  • Well, here’s a headline sure to fill investors with confidence: “From now on, in Europe, everything gets worse.”
  • Spanish unemployment hits 23.4%. And what happens when austerity means they can no longer pay people not to work? That’s he problem with cradle-to-grave European welfare state: sooner or later you run out of your grandchildren’s money…
  • Eurofudge.
  • The Soviet Union yesterday: “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.” Greece today: “The old dynamic—with Greece pretending to make structural changes and its lenders pretending to save it from default—has become untenable.”
  • The whole EU illusion has been predicated on the assumption that Greeks can be made to behave like Germans, and that the EU could manage to forge a new, multi-ethnic, post-national identity in 20 years when Belgium hasn’t been able to do it in almost 200.
  • Cameron caves. Sadly, this behavior is far more in line with his previous record than his brief stint of standing on principle.
  • House Republicans are working to rescind the $100 billion IMF bailout fund Nancy Pelosi helped create. They may not succeed, but they might force the Obama Administration to defend backstopping the Euro at a time when the federal budget is still hemorrhaging red ink…
  • Last week: France’s credit rating makes our latest Euro bailout fund rock solid. This week: oops.
  • The threat of default is also holding up the merger of two Greek banks, maybe because it’s as yet unclear just how they’ll put European taxpayers on the hook for their losses. Once that’s figured out, I’m sure the merger will fly through…
  • Those bondholders who can’t stick it to taxpayers are looking at 70% losses for Greek debt.
  • Just because Italy is broke is no reason for them to drop a bid for the Olympics.

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    Posted in Budget, Economics, Foreign Policy, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »

    You Get a Tax Return! You Get a Tax Return! Everyone Gets a Tax Return!

    January 27th, 2012

    Craig James got the ball rolling by promising to release his tax returns, an offer he immediately made good on:

  • 2006
  • 2007
  • 2008
  • 2009
  • 2010

    • For those of you whom don’t regard paging through an ex-football player’s tax returns an exciting pastime, here’s the executive summary: James earned earned more than $9 million in the past five years, mostly from capital gains on investments. That means he’s Leppert rich, but not Dewhurst rich. Good for him. It’s always nice to see a professional athlete who saved and invested their money wisely, since there are so many who didn’t. He also seems to have given a fair amount to charities over the years.

    Now Ted Cruz, David Dewhurst, and Tom Leppert have all promised to follow suit.

    Good for James. Anything that promotes transparency in government is a good thing.

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    Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas | 2 Comments »

    LinkSwarm for January 26, 2012

    January 26th, 2012

    LinkSwarm, or EuroDoom? LinkSwarm, or EuroDoom? Well, the first link has some of each, but with Davos just starting up, I imagine their will be a nice helping of EuroDoom ready to serve tomorrow, so let’s put up a LinkSwarm today:

  • Mark Steyn looks at the Costa Concordia sinking and smells a metaphor.
  • Myth: Newt Gingrich told his first wife he was divorcing her on her hospital deathbed. Fact: They had already agreed to a divorce, Newt was just visiting her, the tumor was benign, and Jackie Battley Gingrich is still alive. But who are you going to believe: Online liberal trolls, or the daughter who was actually in the hospital room at the time?
  • Borepatch says that Gingrich is particular effective at demolishing the Left’s Thought-terminating cliches.
  • Larry Elder lists all the things Gingrich can nail Obama and the media on.
  • Jonah Goldberg discusses Newtzilla, but his best barbs are reserved for his opponent: “Romney seems like a creature put on Earth to blend in with the humans and report back what he finds. He clearly likes earthlings, and they in turn find him pleasant enough and surprisingly lifelike.”
  • Maureen Dowd on on Obama’s cocoon of self-aggrandizing victimization. Like all Dowd’s columns, it focuses on the trivial minutia of the-personal-as-political…and is all the more devastating for it. “The man who came to Washington on a wave of euphoria has had a presidency with all the joy of a root canal…The Obamas, especially Michelle, have radiated the sense that Americans do not appreciate what they sacrifice by living in a gilded cage. They’ve forgotten Rule No. 1 of politics: No one sheds tears for anyone lucky enough to live at the White House. And after four or eight years of public service, you are assured membership in the 1 percent club.”
  • After 12 months, what has the Arab Spring wrought in Egypt? Cairo Winter: “The reality of the past twelve months, however, has undone whatever high hopes one might have held. Egypt is now headed for radical theocratic, rather than liberal democratic, rule. And a befuddled Obama administration has failed to do anything to stop the coming disaster.” (Hat tip: Michael Totten, who adds: “I know a few Egyptian intellectuals and activists who are authentic liberals, but they’re not remotely a majority. The percentage of Egyptians who genuinely support most or all the tenets of Western-style liberal democracy is in the high single digits at best.”)
  • An interesting quiz that ties in to Charles Murray’s new books asking how thick is your bubble?
  • A roundup of State of the Union reactions from the Texas congressional delegation.
  • Japan suffers its first trade deficit since 1980. Remember all those stories from the 1980s about how Japan was going to take over the world? They were very similar to the ones we were getting about China just a few years ago…

    • Hat tips: Ace, Insta, The Corner, and the usual suspects.

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    Posted in Democrats, Economics, Elections, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Republicans, Welfare State | No Comments »

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