The U.S. government has "helped" no group more than it has "helped" the American Indians. It stuns me when President Obama appears before Indian groups and says things like, "Few have been ignored by Washington for as long as Native Americans."
Ignored? Are you kidding me? They should be so lucky. The government has made most Indian tribes wards of the state. Government manages their land, provides their health care, and pays for housing and child care. Twenty different departments and agencies have special "native American" programs. The result? Indians have the highest poverty rate, nearly 25 percent, and the lowest life expectancy of any group in America. Sixty-six percent are born to single mothers.
Nevertheless, Indian activists want more government "help."
It is intuitive to assume that, when people struggle, government "help" is the answer. The opposite is true. American groups who are helped the most, do the worst.
Consider the Lumbees of Robeson County, N.C."”a tribe not recognized as sovereign by the government and therefore ineligible for most of the "help" given other tribes. The Lumbees do much better than those recognized tribes.
Lumbees own their homes and succeed in business. They include real estate developer Jim Thomas, who used to own the Sacramento Kings, and Jack Lowery, who helped start the Cracker Barrel Restaurants. Lumbees started the first Indian-owned bank, which now has 12 branches.
The Lumbees' wealth is not from casino money.
"We don't have any casinos. We have 12 banks," says Ben Chavis, another successful Lumbee businessman. He also points out that Robeson County looks different from most Indian reservations.
"There's mansions. They look like English manors. I can take you to one neighborhood where my people are from and show you nicer homes than the whole Sioux reservation."
Despite this success, professional "victims" activists want Congress to make the Lumbees dependent"”like other tribes. U.S. Rep. Mike McIntyre (D-N.C.), has introduced the Lumbee Recognition Act, which would give the Lumbees the same "help" other tribes get"”about $80 million a year. Some members of the tribe support the bill.
Of course they do. People like to freeload.
Lawyer Elizabeth Homer, who used to be the U.S. Interior Department's director of Indian land trusts, say the Lumbees ought to get federal recognition.
"The Lumbees have been neglected and left out of the system, and have been petitioning for 100 years. ... They're entitled, by the way."
People like Homer will never get it. Lumbees do well because they've divorced themselves from government handouts. Washington's neglect was a godsend.
Some Lumbees don't want the handout.
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Read this on RealClearPolitics yesterday.
You guys are late.
Yeah. Fuck Reason. 'Cause if I can't read an article first, I ain't fuckin' reading it!
Doesn't he play Keynes in that rap video?
I'm ashamed to admit that the dude who played Keynes had some excellent upper body musculature goin' on. So, no.
Family Guy says Stossel is the worst thing on television.
30 Rock said the same thing.
Incorrect, 30 Rock said TGS is the worst thing on tv and tonight they'll be Stossel, which implies Stossel ISN'T the worst thing on tv.
Sounds like they are admitting that if TGS was a real show on tv it would be the show that manages to be worse than Stossel.
Anyway do you think Seth MacFarlane might be one of our trolls?
None of them are anywhere near that entertaining.
Yes, why did I say Family Guy?
it's the weekly trollbait from Stossel.
Just plain weird.
The case of American Indians and the reservation system is one of the most complex and idiosyncratic in all of U.S. domestic policy. Trying to reduce this story into some simplistic fable about socialism is most unedifying.
And note that the Lumbees did not prosper in some neo-Victorian utopianist version of capitalism red-in-tooth-and-claw. They prospered in the context of the modern American system, with minimum wage, workers comp, unemployment insurance, bank regulation, and all the other horrible paving-stones to serfdom by which the "moochers" rob and coerce the nation's rightious Galts.
The 'stache never disappoints our expectation to be disappointed.
"The case of American Indians and the reservation system is one of the most complex and idiosyncratic in all of U.S. domestic policy. Trying to reduce this story into some simplistic fable about socialism is most unedifying."
WRONG! Reducing complex phenomena to simple causal explanations is extremely edifying. Its what science is all about. Giving a complex explanation for a complex phenomena is however very unedifying.
"Simple" is not the same thing as "simplistic."
There may be a set of "simple causal explanations" for what has happened to a wide variety of tribes on a wide variety of reservations after the prolonged agonies of war, displacement, disease, racist assimilation schemes and failed local-government regimes, but it is not going to boil down to Washington screwing everything up by giving scholarships and clinic care to people with names like John Running Elk.
Simplistic is the ad-hominem version of simple.
"There may be a set of "simple causal explanations" for what has happened to a wide variety of tribes on a wide variety of reservations after the prolonged agonies of war, displacement, disease, racist assimilation schemes and failed local-government regimes, but it is not going to boil down to Washington screwing everything up by giving scholarships and clinic care to people with names like John Running Elk."
Massive FAIL. Just because you say something does not make it so. The MORE complex and idiosyncratic the other factors the MORE likely Stossel's simple explanation is the correct one. This is something you have failed to understand. You think that adding more complexity (wide variety of reservations, wide variety of tribes) hurts Stossel's case. But it doesn't. More complexity makes Stossel's explanation MORE likely.
Why? Well lets consider an example. I have a variable z which often has the value 4. I want to now which input variable explains why z has the value 4. You propose variables x1, x2....xn as possible explanatory variables. You then tell me that whenever x1 has the value 1, then z has the value 4. On other hand x2,...xn can have a wide variety of values and z will still have the value 4. Can x2,..,xn explain z. NO because if I know x2,...,xn I get very little information about z. If you told me that z has the value 4 over every possible value of x2,...,xn then you have proven that x2,...,xn are completely uninformative. Knowing x2,...,xn gives me no ability to predict z. On the otherhand the probabililty than x1 predicts z becomes a lot more likely. Especially if for all other values of x1 we find that z does not have the value 4.
In this case x1 is government interference (a dichotomous yes/no variable). x2,..,xn are all your factors: tribe, culture, historical factors, specific policies, type of reservation etc. This is probabilistic reasoning but its also common sense.
So how do you defeat Stossel's argument. Not your way. One way would be to find examples of successful reservations where government interfered or to find examples of unsuccessful cases where their was little government interference.
[insert whining about mean libertarians to compensate for arguing in bad faith]
This was supposed to be a defense of "simple" explanations? Talk about massive fails...
Anyway, conditions are not the same for every tribe and on every reservation. They vary, of course, because of reasons other than Washington policy. Even genetic susceptibility to alcoholism and diabetes is a factor in the fate of Native American communities.
"I can't think of an argument."
Your gang will never win an election.
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