40th Anniversary of the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

It seems appropriate that tonight’s guest on my radio show is a black reverend that preaches in the inner-city neighborhoods of Seattle. I didn’t realize the connection until after the interview date had been established.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated 40 years ago today in 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. He lead a campaign for civil rights, known for his non-violent marches and demonstrations.

The evening prior to his death, in a sermon that seemed to forsee his fate, Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Llike anybody I would like to live a long life. Longetivity has its place. But I am not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He has allowed me to go up to the mountain, and I have looked over, and I have seen the promised land.”

King was shot in the neck the following day while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. He died later that day in the hospital.

Riots broke out, sweeping through several major U.S. cities. On April 9, 1968 more than 50,000 people attended King’s funeral in Atlanta, Georgia. His legacy, even 40 years after his death, continues. His message remains strong, and in our memories.

tonight Reverend Wayne Perryman joins Political Pistachio Radio at 10pm Eastern/7pm Pacific.

Welcome to Los Angeles, where riots are “resistance” and poverty is a virtue. We are remembering today the tragic murder of Martin Luther King, a man who lived only long enough to “see the promised land” he was leading us to. We have all heard his speeches, and no matter how many times I do, it always inspires me and strengthens my resolve to live up to his high standards. But just as Michelle Obama says, “It’s hard.” Not hard for me, but for those who have heard his words and drawn from them an entirely different lesson. They believe the promised land Reverend King foretold is found at the end of a path lined with victimization and racialization. Over forty years later they still haven’t recognized that they march in a loop, and the entrenched hopelessness they see is a landscape littered with the patronizing outrage of false prophets and white guilt.

So it comes as no surprise that our political leaders would pull from the hallowed grave the legacy of Reverend King, offering it up as ransom to the thugs that hold their city hostage. Can anyone say for sure that the school drop-outs who line up as gang members and drug dealers/users in Los Angeles know who he is or what his expectation of them was? Sadly, no - but our leaders do, and one is at pains to choose which group is more damaging to the dreams MLK had for America.

LOS ANGELES - A 40-hour period to promote peace, justice and non- violence in Los Angeles will begin at 6:01 p.m. tonight, 40 years to the minute when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.

A symbolic 40-hour ban on murder was proposed by activists Earl Ofari Hutchinson and Eddie Jones. An amendment by Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon urged residents to use the 40 hours to “promote peace, justice and non- violence and build a dialogue and awareness of the root causes of violence and killing in our communities.”

“The violence in our communities is unceasing,” City Councilwoman Jan Perry, who represents part of South Los Angeles, said before the council approved the resolution Tuesday.

“Those who may think that this is an empty gesture, I think this will raise the level of discourse not only in our community but hopefully in communities that haven’t been affected as much as we have.”

Joe Hicks, the executive director Los Angeles Human Relations Commission from 1997-2001, was skeptical about the effort’s chances for success.

“It’s just an incredibly silly notion that you can do some kind of symbolic maneuver for 40 hours that the street terrorists that are killing people are going to notice that and say, `Well, I can hold off for a few hours here. Forty-five hours in, I can get busy again,”‘ Hicks told KTLA.

City Councilwoman Janice Hahn told KTLA, “Hopefully it won’t just be symbolic because we know dialoguing, talking, getting the word out, does actually make a difference.”

Hutchinson later told KTLA “we can’t say” if there will be no murders during the moratorium.

Council members said the moratorium is a way to generate dialogue on violence in Los Angeles neighborhoods.

“A moratorium on violence and killing is something we should support 365 days a year and every minute that we live,” Alarcon said.

I wonder if Councilwoman Janice Hahn would like to bet the lives of her loved ones that her approach to ending the “unceasing ” violence of her city will earn peaceful results. Something tells me no. If she and her cohorts had the courage and conviction of the man they claim to commemorate, they’d address the depraved and self-destructive actions of those in the inner-city with the honesty their innocent victims deserve.

We’ve all seen the bumper stickers….”Better a Bleeding Heart Than None At All” and “Republicans Are People Too….Mean, Selfish, Greedy People” but how accurate are those statements?

Sixteen months ago, Arthur C. Brooks, a professor at Syracuse University, published “Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism.” The surprise is that liberals are markedly less charitable than conservatives.
If many conservatives are liberals who have been mugged by reality, Brooks, a registered independent, is, as a reviewer of his book said, a social scientist who has been mugged by data. They include these findings:
Although liberal families’ incomes average 6 percent higher than those of conservative families, conservative-headed households give, on average, 30 percent more to charity than the average liberal-headed household ($1,600 per year vs. $1,227).
Conservatives also donate more time and give more blood.
Residents of the states that voted for John Kerry in 2004 gave smaller percentages of their incomes to charity than did residents of states that voted for George Bush.
Bush carried 24 of the 25 states where charitable giving was above average.

The Logical Household is not “rich” by any stretch of the imagination but we do faithfully give to charity.  Last year, we gave almost 14% of our total income to church and charity (Lupus Foundation, DAV and others).  I don’t say this to brag - I say it as confirmation of the thesis of the article.   I also know from conversations past that there are many liberals here whose actions blow this thesis apart….however, in general, the thesis is valid.  Which leads us to…Barack “We Can Be Better” Obama.

Recently Sen. Obama released his tax records for the last 1o years.  For a man who bitterly complains about how poorly certain portions of the country are treated…who exhorts us to do better, the records are another example of a politician who couldn’t “walk the talk” if their lives (or careers) depended on it.

In 2002, the year before Obama launched his campaign for U.S. Senate, the Obamas reported income of $259,394, ranking them in the top 2 percent of U.S. households, according to Census Bureau statistics. That year the Obamas claimed $1,050 in deductions for gifts to charity, or 0.4 percent of their income.

That amount increased when Senator Obama hit the financial “lottery” by signing two book deals.

Their giving rose to a laudable five percent in 2005 and six percent in 2006, with the explosion of their annual income to near $1 million, and the advent of Mr. Obama’s national political aspirations (representing a rare case in which political ambition apparently led to social benefit).

What is so laughable (and hypocritical) about this is how the campaign tries to excuse this miserly giving…

According to an Obama spokesman, the couple’s miserly charity until 2005 “was as generous as they could be at the time,” given their personal expenses. In other words, despite an annual average income over the period of about $244,000, they simply could not afford to give anything meaningful.
Before we dismiss this explanation, it is worth noting that this is not an uncommon upper-income excuse for not giving. According to 2000 data from the Independent Sector (a trade group for nonprofit organizations), among people with above-average incomes who do not give charitably, a majority actually say it is because they don’t have enough money.

Well if I may be so bold as to borrow a piece of advice you give all of us poor working stiffs when we dare to complain about or tax burdens “maybe you should find somewhere to cut back”.

The release of this data can backfire on the candidate as the Chicago Tribune (a REAL newspaper) points out…

Candidates who skimp on personal donations risk a political price, said Lehane, a former spokesman for Gore who also worked in the Clinton White House.”For a Democrat in particular, given that they tend to be professing a ‘we, not me’ message, it’s always an opportunity to step on the third rail if your charitable contributions don’t stack up,” Lehane said.

It is especially dangerous for a candidate like Barack Obama who has made the inequity of America the lynchpin of his political career and his Presidential run.

Today at noon we’ll have the distinct pleasure of talking to Adam Bellow, VP and excecutive editor at Collins.

Adam Bellow joins us to talk about becoming a conservative, the history of the culture war as he experienced it and the changing environment for conservative publishing in the post-Bush era.

Adam is the author of In Praise of Nepotism, and has been the editor of books by conservative writes like The Bell Curve, David Brock’s The Real Anita Hill, and Dinesh D’Souza’s Illiberal Education. He is the son of Nobel Prize for Literature laureate Saul Bellow and a co-owner of The New Pamphleteers.

Please note the special time: The chat room will be open by 11:45AM, and the call-in number is 646 652-2639. Join us!

Right up there with Michelle Malkin, “Media Lizzy,” Pajama’s Media, Power Line and Ed Morrisey, John Hawkins is one of the top Conservative Bloggers on the Blogosphere. His two sites - Rightwing News and Conservative Grapevine, are enormously popular and pull in tens of thousands of viewers a day.

He will be our guest tonight at 7:00 pm cst on “Libertarian Politics Live.” Listen in at www.blogtalkradio.com/libertarian.

We will be discussing: Obama’s ties to Radical Islam and Rev. Wright, McCain’s poll numbers, Ron Paul wierdness, and Bob Barr’s entry into the race as a Libertarian.

You can call in at 646-915-9887.

We’re also expecting a special guest or two to check in with us.

And if you missed our show last week with US Senator Mike Gravel now Libertarian for President, you can still listen to it on podcast at the link above.

For cutting edge news on the libertarian political movement from a Rightwing perspective - www.libertarianrepublican.blogspot.com