On Willis Hart Lying About What The Black Lives Matter Movement Is Protesting About

The following from Wikipedia sums up what the focus of the Black Lives Matter movement is.

Black Lives Matter (BLM) is an international activist movement, originating in the African American community, that campaigns against violence toward black people. BLM regularly organizes protests around the deaths of black people in killings by law enforcement officers, and broader issues of racial profiling, police brutality, and racial inequality in the United States criminal justice system. (Wikipedia/Black Lives Matter).

I bring this up because the Libertarian blogger Willis Hart, while he has put up quite a few posts on his blog about BLM, CLEARLY does not understand why the movement exists.

Willis Hart: On Black Lives Mattering... There's never been an argument from me. IN FACT, being that the black murder rate is fully 6 times that of whites (17.5 per 100,000 versus 2.6 per 100,000) with the perpetrators being 93% other black people, I'm actually quite insulted that this bullshit is being placed not just at my doorstep but the law enforcement community's, too... STOP BLOWING YOUR FUCKING BRAINS OUT (much of it over foolishness; half-eaten Snickers bars, Air Jordan sneaks, some big-butted heifer, a slight, etc.), PEOPLE. BLACK LIVES MATTER!!!!!! (11/18/2015 AT 5:07pm).

What Willis claims is being "placed at his [and law enforcement's] doorstep" - IS NOT! The movement is not protesting in regards to ALL Black deaths, but ONLY Black deaths caused by law enforcement, you dolt! Although, calling Willis a dolt implies that he's simply being an oblivious White guy in not getting what the focus of BLM is.

The other possibility is that he's lying. A possibility I'm not ruling out. I mean, I think they've been QUITE clear that what they're protesting is the police killing Black people (as well as brutality directed against African Americans), and not Black (criminal) civilians killing other Black civilians. Sure, that's an issue as well, but law enforcement is supposed to enforce the law, not break it! Whereas criminals breaking the law is to be expected.

Yes, Willis is correct about the murder rate in the Black community being higher than in the White community, but I'd argue that is a symptom of the problem. That racism is the cause of the murder rate being higher, in that racism is a factor in that racism causes poverty which in turn leads to more crime.

BTW, Black criminals killing other Black people is (1) not something the Black community at large can be blamed for, and (2) something that makes perfect sense, as PolitiFact points out according to "experts... most people - whether black or white - are murdered by people in their own racial group, and that has held true for decades".

Black murderers mostly target Black victims JUST AS White murderers mostly target White victims. This is to be expected. And, in refutation of the point Willis thinks he is making, the BLM movement is NOT placing the blame for these murders on him or on law enforcement!

The ONLY "bullshit" the BLM movement is placing on the law enforcement community is holding them accountable for the Black suspects they kill (and brutalize). And I genuinely think there is a problem here, given the fact that a Black person is 300 percent more likely to be killed by a police officer than a White person.

Willis Hart, as an oblivious White guy (who flatly denies that White privilege even exists) is "offended" by the suggestion that cops killing Black suspects is a problem. In fact he lies (or misunderstands... yeah, right) about why BLM exists - which is something that OFFENDS ME!

I mean, if Willis wants to criticize BLM on a factual basis, that's one thing. But for him to put forward this lame strawman is pure bullshit, I think. Yet another example of how the strawman-loving Hartster is full of it.

OST #90

On Why I Don't Like Willis Hart

When you lose 3 out of the 5 of your remaining commenters - maybe it indicates that I was right about Willis all along? Jerry Critter, Rational Nation and Dennis Marks... gone. Only BB Idaho and Rusty Schmuckelford remain... and they don't even comment that often.

"Take a hike, Willis boy" I say to his increasingly racist and misogynist commentaries. Misogynist diatribes like the following (which I imagine spewing from his butthole face).

On Why I Don't Like Jennifer Lawrence... 'Cause when everybody says one thing (to the point of forcing it down my throat), I say, "Take a hike, Jackie boy". That, and with a meh body she's not even a good butterface. (12/16/2015 AT 8:50pm).

Judging a woman by her fitness/body type and calling a woman a "butterface" are both things I'd say are sexist. Not to mention the fact that neither terms "meh body" nor "butterface" applies to Jennifer Lawrence.

Further proof of the Hartster's misogyny? I say yes, given the fact that he doesn't even mention whether or not he likes her movies - something where some legitimate criticisms could possibly be made. But Willis goes immediately to her looks. As if that is the most important/only factor by which to judge the worth of a woman.

And, what the hell is the one thing people are saying - to the point of forcing it down his throat? That Jennifer Lawrence is a beautiful woman? While I wouldn't argue with that, I see no evidence of anyone trying to force this down anyone's throat. If Willis doesn't like her movies, how about he doesn't watch them? Boom, done.

BTW, when I say I don't like Willis Hart, I mean I don't like him AS A BLOGGER. Just like (I assume), when he says he doesn't like Jennifer Lawrence, he means as an actress (although he IS judging her looks). I might, if I met him and got to know him, actually like Willis Hart as a person? Maybe, but I doubt it. Given how repellent I find a lot of what he writes on his blog.

OST #89

How Pitiful Is It That Willis Hart Doesn't Understand What The Purpose Of Affirmative Action Is?

The Libertarian blogger Willis Hart hates Affirmative Action and wishes it was abolished. Even though he clearly does not understand what it's purpose is.

Willis Hart: On the Fact that Not a Single Affirmative Action Program in All of Human History Has Ever Ended Because of Success... So, either affirmative action programs don't work (as Thomas Sowell, Stuart Taylor, and Richard Sander have asserted) or the government is so incompetent that they can't administer them (well, that and the fact that government programs never seem to go away in that the bureaucrats and special interests which benefit from them will never in a million years willingly relinquish their power). How pitiful. (12/11/2015 AT 4:08pm).

There would no longer be a need for AA programs if/when all racism is abolished. But getting rid of racism is NOT a goal of Affirmative Action! AA programs are meant to alleviate some of the inequality created by racism - and that should lead to some lessening of racism - but the problem of racism is a LOT bigger problem than AA can address.

AA can't do the job by itself. So this "success" that Willis speaks of (eliminating racism and therefore the need for AA programs) is NOT a success AA will ever achieve. Not by itself. Yet Willis puts forth this strawman in order to "discredit" Affirmative Action. How pitiful.

Apparently Willis believes government is "so incompetent" because giving African Americans opportunities hasn't magically eliminated all racism. And he (apparently) believes that encouraging/mandating diversity somehow gives "bureaucrats" power.

Also, Affirmative Action programs DO work. As Derek Bok and William Bowen have asserted in their book The Shape of the River (Far Reaching Study Documents Success of Affirmative Action).

The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions [is] the book that has forever changed the debate on affirmative action in America. [This book represents] the most far-reaching and comprehensive study of its kind. It brings a wealth of empirical evidence to bear on how race-sensitive admissions policies actually work and clearly defines the effects they have had on over 45k students of different races... [An LA Times review says that] "...the authors prove with facts, not anecdotes, that affirmative action works". (Princeton University Press).

According to Debra Humphreys (Vice President, Office of Communications, Policy and Public Engagement, Association of American Colleges & Universities), "Bok and Bowen's study demonstrates conclusively that race-sensitive admissions policies have dramatic benefits for the African American students admitted under them".

Affirmative Action programs work... in giving opportunities to deserving African Americans. The research show this to be the case. As for Thomas Sowell, Stuart Taylor, and Richard Sander (the individuals Willis cites who say Affirmative Action doesn't work)? The reason they give, a theory known as "mismatch", has been debunked (more on that with my next commentary).

The bottom line here is that the "success" that Willis Hart says we should see if Affirmative Action programs worked - eliminating racism - is NOT a problem that AA can solve. Not be itself, at least. That AA programs can eliminate racism is a strawman invention being put forward by Libertarian (and Conservative) racists like the Hartster.

As opposed to failing because racism still exists (racism that makes it harder for African Americans to succeed), the data shows that AA programs work.

OST #88

Willis Hart A Bald-Faced Liar & Ignoramus Re The Non-Fact Of Bernie Sanders Blaming ISIS On AGW

Bernie Sanders, due to him being a Democratic Socialist who is running for POTUS, has inspired the Libertarian blogger Willis Hart to author a number of commentaries. Most of them focusing on how much of a dumbass Sanders is for not being a Libertarian.

In this case Willis is outraged that Senator Sanders correctly links ISIS in Syria to AGW (man-caused climate change).

Willis Hart: On the Fact that Bernie Sanders Is Attempting to Blame ISIS on (Man-Made) Climate Change... This man is either a bald-faced liar or an ignoramus beyond belief. (12/8/2015 AT 3:57pm).

The existence of ISIS cannot be blamed on man-caused climate change (Anthropogenic global warming or AGW) and Senator Sanders has made no such argument. Willis lies about this. Or he's an ignoramus and his take on Senator Sanders' actual argument is based on 2nd hand criticisms (from Conservative/Libertarian sources that are lying).

Either way there is lying involved, because, as we know (and perhaps Willis would agree with this) it was events put into action by former preznit gwb that lead to an environment where the formation of a group like ISIS was inevitable (the power vacuum created by the Iraq war/removal of Saddam and the dissolution of the Iraqi military).

Senator Sanders agrees with this read of the facts (as does the Libertarian-Republican Rand Paul).

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on [10/12/2014] told CNN host Candy Crowley that it was easy to criticize President Barack Obama's fight against ISIS in Iraq, but he reminded her that it was President George Bush's "disastrous blunder" that allowed the extremists group to get a foothold in the first place. [According to Sanders] "...We are here today because of the disastrous blunder of the Bush-Cheney era, which got us into this war in Iraq in the first place, which then developed the can of worms that we're trying to deal with right now" (Bernie Sanders reminds CNN host: You can slam Obama, but Bush's blunder created ISIS by David Edwards. RawStory 10/12/2014).

This claim that "Bernie Sanders Is Attempting to Blame ISIS on Man-Made Climate Change" is just another of the Hartster's infamous strawmen. Bernie Sanders blames ISIS on george bush's Iraq invasion.

As for the ACTUAL statements Senator Sanders has made in regards to the link between climate change and terrorism (and YES, he has made such statements)...

Bernie Sanders appearing on the 11/15/2015 edition of Face the Nation: ...we are going to see an increase in drought and flood and extreme weather disturbances as a result of climate change, what that means is that peoples all over the world are going to be fighting over limited natural resources... what happens in, say, Syria... is that when you have drought, when people can't grow their crops, they're going to migrate into cities... And when people migrate into cities and they don't have jobs, there's going to be a lot more instability, a lot more unemployment, and people will be subject to the types of propaganda that al Qaeda and ISIS are using right now... So where you have discontent, where you have instability, that's where problems arise, and certainly, without a doubt, climate change will lead to that. (Sanders doubles down: Climate change causes terrorism by Bradford Richardson. The Hill 11/15/2015).

ISIS can't be blamed on man made climate change. There is a link, however.

U.S. military officials refer to climate change as a "threat multiplier" that takes issues like terrorism that would pose a threat to national security and exacerbates the damage they can cause. A 2014 Department of Defense report identifies climate change as the root of government instability that leads to widespread migration [and] can create an avenue for extremist ideologies and conditions that foster terrorism"... ...a paper published in the academic journal PNAS earlier this year argues that climate change helped create instability and fighting in Syria. The Islamic State, commonly known as ISIS, arose in the country in large part due to that instability. (Why Climate Change and Terrorism Are Connected by Justin Worland. Time 11/15/2015).

Senator Sanders did not, by the way, "double down" and say "climate change causes terrorism". What Senator Sanders is saying is the SAME THING the Department of Defense and PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is "one of the world's most-cited and comprehensive multidisciplinary scientific journals") reports say... that climate change will (and has) made terrorism worse.

But the fact that Sanders is 100 percent correct on this did not prevent him being ridiculed in the media. By climate change deniers on the Right (like Willis) as well as others such as PolitiFact... which says Sanders' statements on the link between terrorism and climate change is "mostly false". But (in this case) PolitiFact is as full of shit as Willis.

But even PolitiFact didn't lie about Sanders saying climate change is TO BLAME for ISIS. PolitiFact reports that Sanders said "climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism". Climate change contributes to the growth (not creation) of situations that lead to more people becoming radicalized.

One such situation (as Senator Sanders points out) is the Syrian drought which has lead to the the refugee crisis. Refugees that US Republican politicos are demonizing by suggesting some might be ISIS infiltrators. These are people who are fleeing the conflict (between the Assad government, the so-called moderate rebels and ISIS).

For the record, the Syrians that joined ISIS (due to the instability caused by the conflict and made worse by the drought) could find easier methods to infiltrate over a multi-year vetting process (which the refugees are going through) [1]... such as via a tourist visa [2].

The bottom line is that climate change does act as a "threat multiplier" as the Department of Defense (in agreement with Senator Sanders) acknowledges. Sanders tells tells the truth in regards to this matter and Willis Hart is the ignorant liar. Although the Hartster's perfidiousness in regards to the very real link between climate change and terrorism isn't "beyond belief" given his long history of AGW denialism and hate for democratic socialism (his preference being for economic policies that favor the oligarchs).

Footnotes
[1] ...refugee applicants are subject to the highest level of security checks of any type of traveler to the U.S. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees initially chooses which refugees to refer to the U.S. after doing its own check. U.S. officials then conduct multiple in-person interviews and verify a refugee's story with intelligence agencies and by running background checks through several government databases, including DHS and the National Counterterrorism Center. (Can Terrorists Really Infiltrate the Syrian Refugee Program? by Russell Berman. The Atlantic 11/18/2015).
[2] It's much easier for a would-be terrorist to fly to the U.S. on a tourist visa. ...it makes little sense for an aspiring terrorist to apply to enter the United States as a refugee. Passing through the process often takes at least 18 months, and sometimes much longer. ... Overall, refugees are unlikely to be resettled at all - the UN Refugee Agency says that only about 1 percent of the world's refugees end up being taken in permanently elsewhere. Stephen Legomsky, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis and former chief counsel for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said... "No competent terrorist would choose the U.S. refugee process as a preferred strategy for gaining entry into the US". (Here's Why You Should Stop Worrying About Terrorists Entering The U.S. As Refugees by Roque Planas. HuffPo 11/18/2015).

OST #87

On The Trusting of One's Well-Being to Parasitic Transnational Megacorporations, Bought & Paid for Think Tank Fellows, & Greedy Power-Hungry CEOs

These people are deluded/brainwashed beyond comprehension. Frankly I find it astonishing that Libertarian democracy-hating wealth-worshiping stooges like Willis V Hart are so eager to turn our country over to the oligarchs wholely. One surely can not have boatload of self-esteem to live like that. And don't even get me going on the naivete. Please. PLEASE.

OST #86

On The Fact That (According To Mortgage Expert David Min) Willis Hart Is Full Of Shit When He Quotes Conservative Economist Edward Pinto Who Says 76% of the Subprime Loans At the Time of the Housing Crisis Were on the Books of Government Agencies

While we all know that subprime mortgage defaults caused the 2008 housing bubble financial crisis, some people are still trying to blame the government agencies that backup mortgage loans made by private sector banks. These government-is-always-the-problem types exclusively being Conservatives or Libertarians.

Willis Hart, a Libertarian blogger, is one such person.

Willis Hart: On the Fact that (According to Economist, Edward Pinto) 76% of the Subprime Loans in the U.S. at the Time of the Housing Crisis in 2008 Were on the Books of Government Agencies; Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA, HUD, etc... And yet we still have partisan idiots like Krugman going around saying that the crisis wasn't at all caused by government policies. Unbelievable, huh? (11/30/2015 AT 4:03pm).

76 percent of subprime loans were on the books of government agencies when the market crashed? That's a lot, huh? Given that huge number, how could anyone argue that the government was not a major driver of the 2008 crash?

As it turns out, however, AEI economist Edward Pinto is fudging the definition of "subprime" in order to make his case that the 2008 crisis was primarily caused by government policies (of maintaining liquidity in the housing market by buying mortgages made by private sector banks).

...according to David Min, a leading... critic [of this analysis] at the Center for American Progress, as of the second quarter of 2010, the delinquency rate on all Fannie and Freddie guaranteed loans was 5.9 percent. By contrast, the national average was 9.11 percent. The Fannie and Freddie... default rate is similarly much lower than the national default rate. The... explanation for this is that many of the loans being characterized by... Pinto as "subprime" are not, in fact, true subprime mortgages. (An Inconvenient Truth by Joe Nocera. NYT 12/19/2011).

So Pinto is lumping mortgages into the "subprime" category that don't belong there, and suggesting that, because so large a percentage of "subprime" mortgages were held by government agencies, government agencies are responsible for driving the 2008 crisis. Although the liar leaves out the fact that these mortgages he incorrectly lumped in were being defaulted on at a lower rate (and they were NOT the mortages driving the crisis).

This is why David Min (whose bio at the University of Irvine CA School of Law says he "is a nationally recognized expert on financial markets regulation" whose area of expertise includes mortgages) says that "federal affordable housing policies were the primary cause of the financial crisis" argument made by the Conservative American Enterprise Institute (of which Edward Pinto is a Resident Fellow) "has been rejected by many analysts".

...most of the "subprime" mortgages [AEI Fellows including Pinto] attributes to federal affordable housing policies could not have been motivated by these policies, either because the loans were ineligible (typically because they were made to higher-income borrowers) or because the lenders were not subject to these policies (such as in the case of the non-bank lenders, which did not have any applicable federal affordable housing requirements; non-bank lenders made up 24 of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006). [The fact is that] the housing bubble occurred during a period when Fannie and Freddie's market share dropped precipitously. ...central to [Pinto's] argument that affordable housing policies (including those advocated by Rep. Frank in 1992) caused the mortgage crisis is his claim that the federal government is responsible for 19.2 million "subprime" mortgages (with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac being responsible for 12 million of those). But [this figure is arrived at] using [a] own made-up definition of "subprime", a definition that no one outside of [AEI] uses. ...the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office has estimated that there were only 4.58 million subprime and other high risk loans outstanding, with very few of these attributable to the federal government. (For the Last Time, Fannie and Freddie Didn't Cause the Housing Crisis by David Min. The Atlantic 12/16/2011).

The conclusion by Min (which he refers to at the "mainstream" explanation) is that "it was unregulated securitization on Wall Street that drove the financial crisis" and NOT government agencies as Willis Hart claims with his post. Frankly I find it unbelievable that the Hartster thinks he can present these fabrications as "fact" when they aren't. His solution to getting rid of any pushback to his BS is simply to ban from his echo chamber anyone who disagrees.

BTW, in the interest of being completely honest, David Min never said that either Edward Pinto or Willis Hart are full of shit. Although I think that what he did say proves that they both are. His criticism was actuallyh aimed specifically at AEI Fellow Peter Wallison (due to Min's article being a response to an article that Wallison authored). This is an article in which Wallison writes, "my dissent [to an Atlantic article in which Barney Frank is interviewed and says F&F and other government agencies were NOT responsible for the 2008 crash is] based on the research of my AEI colleague Edward Pinto".

OST #85