The Gimme Generation

 Somewhere along the way, we started naming our generations. We had the Greatest Generation, the ‘ 50s Generation, the Hippie Generation, the Now Generation, the Me Generation, the X Generation, the Millennial Generation, and probably others I can’t recall. Now, I don’t know exactly who decides these names or even how they are determined, but the generation surviving the Obama years could rightly be called the Gimme Generation.

A noble American hallmark is that we try not to let the needy suffer. There are myriad of religious and private charitable organizations that help those in need. Through the years, a benevolent congress has seen fit to create government programs to help those unable to help themselves. Like everything else in government, these programs have spawned increasingly more give-away programs. All funded, obviously, by taxpayers.

In 2007, we entered what some term the Great Recession. Americans all felt the pinch – some more than others. Falling housing values, disappearing jobs, high unemployment, foreclosures, loan defaults, and bankruptcies put a real hurt on a wide swath of the population.

Even more government handout programs were spawned in the name of economic recovery. Companies, and individuals were crying for help. The federal government handed out some 17 trillion dollars more than we had, and put us in monstrous debt.

Many of the bailed out companies have reportedly repaid their debt, and many of the individuals that were helped by government programs were indeed thankful and are on the road to economic self-sufficiency. Although the government claims the recession is over and millions of new jobs have reportedly been created, the poverty level keeps climbing even while the national debt is increasing. How could this be happening?

I saw a report from FoxNews.com titled Food Stamp Fraud Rampant: GAO Report. The piece centered on a Government Accounting Office report from August 5. Apparently, Americans receiving food stamps were caught selling and bartering their benefits online for art, housing, and cash.

I checked it out. Even though claims that the recession is over, the amount of food assistance is incredibly rising. According to data I obtained from the FDA, the total cost of SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) in 2007, the reported recession beginning, was 33.172 billion dollars. In 2013, the cost jumped to 79.923 billion dollars. That’s a 140% increase! In 2007, there were 26.136 million people receiving SNAP; by 2013 that had jumped to 47.036 million. If the recession is over, why aren’t these numbers going down?

Now enter the fraud factor. The government calls them “overpayments.” This doesn’t begin to describe the nature of this abuse of taxpayer money. People have sold and bartered SNAP funds to buy items unrelated to food, and many ineligible people are receiving SNAP money. Payments are going to dead people and prisoners.

Just how much fraud is there? Good question. The GAO report uses data from 1997 and 1998, and has conspicuously not shown current fraud data. In 1995, there were 12,000 prisoners in four states receiving food stamps. There is nothing in the report to show that this condition has improved, or that the number of ineligible recipients has dropped. To the contrary, since 2002 all states are required to issue EBT cards that work like bank debit cards. Now it is even easier to spend our tax dollars on things not intended for the SNAP program, and certainly not essential for sustenance.

Consider SNAP is but one government program handing out free stuff. From cell phones to free breakfast and lunches at schools, Americans are getting ever more stuff at taxpayer expense. What will happen when there are no more taxpayers left to foot the bill? Ain’t socialism grand?

I have to wonder. Are government figures lying to us about the recession being over, or are we simply becoming the Gimme Generation?

Why Is Life Still Black-and-White?

 It’s still a black-and-white world. In the ‘50s, we had a black-and-white TV, movies were in black-and-white, our cameras mostly used black-and-white film, and our buses and lunch counters were divided by black and white, so were our communities.

When color television came out, our world suddenly took on a new depth. Color film became available for the masses. The movies were in “living color.” But until the ‘60s our buses, lunch counters, and communities were still separated by black and white.

When Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law in 1964, the expectation was that the last black-and-white part of our lives would finally be changed. And to some extent, it was. Blacks and whites could finally sit wherever they wanted at lunch counters, our segregated neighborhoods began to take on new color, and anyone that still rode a bus could sit wherever there was room. At last, our country would be a fully integrated society.

Whoa, wait a minute. That last part didn’t really happen, did it? After 1964, some things did change, and great strides were made to affect a color-blind society, but we are still plagued by complaints from the “Black Community” over perceived racial injustices.

In the late ‘60s, we had race riots. Today, we still have race riots. Why?

For decades, affirmative action has been placing under-achieving minorities in classes to the detriment of overall education. Despite anti-segregation laws, minorities still group together in their own communities, and sit together at lunch counters and on buses. Blacks who have risen above the poverty level and become productive members of society are looked down on by other Blacks. For the first time in the history of our country, we have a half-Black President, who was elected, not on his record of achievements, education, or proven competent leadership, but because of his race.

Why, if technology can add color to the way we view the world, can legislation not eliminate the boundaries of a black-and-white society? Why, after fifty years are we still having race riots?

I believe the answer lies simply in human nature. We do not have a color-blind society because the minority side doesn’t want a level playing field. High-profile rabble-rousers like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton thrive on race baiting. And, unfortunately for the Black communities, they are not the only ones. Whites and Blacks poke at the hornet’s nest of racial animosity. From the time they are born, Blacks are fed the propaganda that they are being beat down by Whites. It is no wonder so many blacks suffer from a serious inferiority complex that they mask by a chip-on-the-shoulder attitude.

Anti-segregation laws and school busing were supposed to create an integrated society. To a small extent, these laws produced the desired effect. Why, then, do we still have minority communities? Why are there still schools with predominantly minority students?

Again, it comes down to human nature. People of like-mindedness will always seek each other out. They will find a way to congregate with others of the same stripe. Laws cannot change human nature. There is no country in the world that is truly integrated and, where communities contain a well-distributed population of diverse colored citizens.

The latest incident of rioting instigated by race baiting comes from Ferguson, Missouri, where the National Guard has been sent in to quell the rioting. The match to this powder keg was a black teen named Michael Brown.

I bring this incident up simply to illustrate my point that the race-baiting rabble-rousers are keeping Blacks in their self-pitying wallow.

Like Trayvon Martin, Rodney King and other rioting flash points, Michael Brown was no choir boy. Brown was a street thug. Footage of a convenience store robbery just before the incident that got him shot by the police, show Brown stealing items from the store, and when a customer points this out, he grabs the customer by the throat and picks him off the ground. Later, Brown and a friend are walking in the middle of the street, When a police officer pulls his marked cruiser up to ask why they are in the street, Brown rips the door to the car open and assaults the officer.

According to police reports, Brown tried to get the officer’s gun and was shot. When the officer got out of the car, the wounded Brown turned and charged the officer. At that point, the officer rightly feared for his life and put some five rounds into Brown, killing him.

This is the point where the race baiting begins. Michael Brown is Black and a teen in a predominantly black neighborhood. Brown’s accomplice in his walk in the middle of the street says Brown had his hands up saying don’t shoot. Suddenly, the neighborhood is full of “witnesses” claiming the police shot an unarmed Black teen. Next, the high-profile rabble-rousing race baiters stir up the Black community and rioting breaks out.

Of course, what’s a good riot with out an ample amount of gratuitous looting? Free stuff for the down trodden. Hell, you don’t even need food stamps.

Still black-and-white? You bet. And our communities will remain black-and-white until everyone understands that we are all members of the same species – Homo Sapien.

Thousands of years ago two species inhabited the earth at the same time – Homo Sapiens and Neanderthal. The Neanderthals are no longer with us, yet many of us have Neanderthal genes. Did we interbreed the Neanderthals out of existence, or did the species baiters finally drive the Homo Sapiens to kill off the Neanderthals?

The consistent attribute of history is that it always repeats itself.