Brenda Buttner's Bulls and Bears segment begins with logical talk from House leaders and President Obama about the need for places for kids to play and job opportunities for the youth of America's inner-city. I was impressed that just 4 of the 6 pundits thought the problem was too many liberal solutions, like investing in programs that provide education and recreational opportunities for the poor. Generally, they have one person with a rational viewpoint fighting to get in a word among 5 crazy cons.
They allocate no blame on the manufacturing-destroying policies of Reagan and years of Republican Congressional rule that shipped most of our jobs overseas. Add all that insult to the injury of cutting taxes for rich people and voila! You have the gentrification of these inner cities that drives the poor to outlying areas where there are no jobs. What's left are neighborhoods with high unemployment, high dropout rates and rampant crime. Police brutality is just the straw that broke the camel's back, the catalyst that drove the desperately poor to rioting.
John B Layfield, formerly known as the right-wing wrestler, seems to dominate the conversation. He spouted his accomplishments from the center of all the action, Bermuda, where he works with at-risk youth and spends so much of his valuable time on it. He claims the government can't do anything right and
"all the government is going to do is throw money at the situation and leave and forget about it, look at the Ninth Ward in New Orleans."
Because he's referring to right-wing government, like that of the Bush Administration which did NOTHING right and threw so much money at problems they created, and Layfield forgets, we fell into deep recession at the end of the Bush Crime Family's regime. That's where he draws his experience with government spending.
The segment featured two rational liberals out of the six pundits. Non-confrontational Jonas Max Ferris and David Mercer added some rationality to the discussion, Mercer explained that anti-poverty measures HAVE worked and the government can fix poverty, as the Great Society and FDR's WPA proved, more than effectively. They explain that the highly punitive system of mass incarceration has been a disaster. The jobs have left the city and without tax revenue, there are just ghettos that have no recreational and job opportunities for the marginalized youth.
Then, habitual liar, Gary B. Smith with a sarcastic tone claims, like the wrestler, that the government NEVER spends money well. The war on poverty has increased the rate of poverty, he suggests, which is completely false. Then he offers three proven ways to remedy the poverty:
Keep a job, any job full time, stay in high school and don't get pregnant out of wedlock.
He fails to mention the eradication of the majority of jobs, so his first suggestion is completely idiotic. Staying in school when the schools are constantly being hit with funding cuts, is not exactly a priority if a kid knows that there will be no jobs when they graduate. The Republican war on women is removing family planning facilities from so many places and the access to contraception and basic education is sadly lacking.
Susan Welch chimes in and blames those job-killing regulations for all the problems in the cities,but she doesn't name one regulation that may have caused economic hardship. The consensus was the 2 reasonable pundits who cited real examples of solutions were overpowered by crazy conservatives who ignored the failures of Reaganomics. Just another day at Fox News.
