Obama's Policies Burden the Working Poor

Facing mid-term elections and burdened with persistently high unemployment, President Obama is playing the race, gender and class cards. Fabricating fear and injustice, such tactics keep the economy in slow gear and make worse the very people the president professes to help.

The financial crisis hit black Americans much harder than it did white Americans — more jobs and wealth were lost in the black community and in neither category have they since recouped as much as white individuals have. The fundamental problems are slow growth, especially in blue-collar manufacturing and construction, and deep-seated problems in the black community — lagging educational attainment, high rates of teen pregnancies and the like.

Instead of effectively addressing those, the president and Democratic members of Congress offer palliative solutions — more Medicaid, food stamps and other entitlements. They also raise alarm among black Americans that Republican-dominated state governments are conspiring to steal their right to vote and charge the GOP is contaminated by racists. The inconvenient truth is that in 2012, 66.2 percent of eligible black Americans voted versus 64.2 percent of eligible non-Hispanic whites, even though some 34 states have voter ID laws.

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