Istook’s Insights: Attacks on police, the shrinking middle class, and the Internet giveaway
Published: June 3rd, 2015
The attack on America’s police is sickening.
Sure, bad cops exist. But bad politicians are a bigger problem. So are bad parents and bad kids. Most cops are good cops, but the media ignores that fact.
Too many people don’t respect our laws.
Bad politicians see lots of votes within those groups. So they push to shift blame away from the lawbreakers and onto the law enforcers.
Al Sharpton claims elections will be blocked unless something is done about the police. What Sharpton wants is a free pass for his followers. That invites gang violence.
Some parts of New York City feel unsafe because their mayor told the police to slack off. In Baltimore, murderous gangs run wild because activist prosecutors have targeted police.
If your family were in danger, would you call Al Sharpton instead of calling police? Good luck prying him away from the TV cameras.
In other news – Honey, they’ve shrunk the middle class.
Upward mobility first requires gaining a middle class income, on your way to a higher standard of living.
For a decade, over 60 percent of Americans told Gallup pollsters they consider themselves middle class.
Today that has shrunk to 51 percent, while 48 percent say they are lower class or working class.
What happened? Government.
Low incomes were exempted from income taxes, then taxes hit hard when you approach middle class. Plus you lose the public assistance benefits awarded to lower incomes.
Welfare reform? Abandoned.
Also, runaway regulations raise prices, making it harder to make ends meet.
Failure to enforce immigration laws increases the ratio of low incomes. First, millions of illegal immigrants arrive poor, although hopeful. Second, they drive down wages, so others find it more difficult to find work.
Government encourages low incomes, but punishes efforts to become self-sufficient.
Wrapping up, when it comes to the Internet, an Obama decision is worth $370-million to a private group.
President Obama gave away American control of the Internet just like President Jimmy Carter gave away our control of the Panama Canal.
Expect wild confusion as the group put in charge has approved 1,000 new top-level domains; another 1,000 are in the works. They charge each applicant $185,000, so that put $370 million in the coffers of ICANN — the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
They get money. We get confusion. Top-level domains are extensions like .com, .org, and .gov. The new ones have lots of confusing similarities, including both .fish and .fishing; plus .gift, .gifts and .gives. Also .market, .markets and .marketing. Plus there are .sex, .sexy, .porn, .adult, .xxx and .sucks. People and businesses are buying websites just to keep others from linking them with those names.
And it all traces back to another Obama giveaway.