Disband The Black Caucus
Investor's Business Daily
September 15, 2011

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=584923&;p=1

Racial Politics: Next week, the Congressional Black Caucus will hold its 41st annual conference in Washington. It should be its last. The race-baiting group is alarmingly corrupt and out of control.

Founded in 1971 by 13 civil-rights leaders as "the conscience of the Congress," the caucus has strayed far from its original mission. Now boasting 42 politicians — including some of the most radical and unethical in Congress — it chiefly serves its own interests.

Its lavish annual gala is an unseemly shakedown of corporate donors unwittingly funding a war chest for Marxist causes. While the living conditions of average African-Americans worsen, this elite black power club has empowered and enriched its own.

The group has become an embarrassment not just to the black community and the civil-rights legacy it deigns to uphold, but the Democratic Party from which it draws almost all of its members. It should be disbanded. Here's a bill of indictment:

• Hate speech: The caucus is run by racial arsonists spewing dangerous rhetoric.

Its whip, Rep. Andre Carson, last month likened Tea Party members to Klansmen who want to see blacks "hanging on a tree." Another member, Rep. Frederica Wilson, targeted the Tea Party as "the real enemy." The caucus' doyen, Rep. Maxine Waters, poured her trademark kerosene on the fire, adding: "The Tea Party can go straight to hell."

Rep. Allen West was so disgusted by the "hate-filled comments" he threatened to quit the caucus. He admonished fellow members to "follow the example of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., not the example of Rev. Jeremiah Wright." (The group's lone Republican, West says he only joined the caucus out of respect for his late parents.)

• Racism: Membership is closed to other races. The exclusively black group is the only one on the Hill that enforces a pigment test: No whites or other minorities allowed.

When a white lawmaker representing a mostly black district was turned down for membership, Rep. William Lacy Clay, son of the caucus co-founder, explained that it's an "unwritten rule" that you must be black to join. It's the sole criterion of membership.

• Corruption: Four caucus members show up on the left-leaning Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington's list of the "most corrupt" lawmakers. Several have been brought up on ethics charges or come under Justice Department investigation, including:

Waters, who stands accused of improperly lobbying Treasury officials to bail out a black bank, OneUnited, where her husband owned stock and served on the board.

(Waters recently called bankers "gangsters" and threatened to "tax them out of business" if they didn't forgive minority mortgage delinquencies. She should know about gangsta bankers: The Los Angeles Times reports her OneUnited CEO pal Kevin Cohee in 2007 was charged with crack possession. The same year, the paper says, police also arrested him on a rape complaint.)

Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., convicted last year of 12 ethics violations. Among other things, the former Ways and Means Committee chair accepted gifts from donors with business before the tax-writing body. He also failed to pay taxes on rental income, and filed bad financial disclosure papers.

Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., a Rangel confidant caught up in an ongoing Justice corruption probe into prominent Queens Democrats.

Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, who admitted improperly steering $31,000 in Black Caucus Foundation scholarships to relatives and children of an aide.

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., who has come under Justice investigation for his role in former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's influence-peddling scandal.

Other caucus members who have found themselves in ethics or legal trouble in recent years include: Rep. Laura Richardson, D-Calif.; Rep. Melvin Watt, D-N.C.; Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Fla.; ex-Sen. Roland Burris, D-Ill.; ex-Rep. Frank Ballance, D-N.C.; ex-Rep. Earl Hilliard Jr., D-Ala., and ex-Rep. William Jefferson, D-La.

When Jefferson refused to step down after FBI agents caught him red-handed with $90,000 of bribery cash in his office freezer, the caucus thoroughly shamed itself by supporting the crook. He's now serving 13 years — in the federal pen.

The caucus blames racism for the ethics cloud that seems to follow it more than any other group. Of course, the corrupt culture is a sign of something rotten within the group itself.

But instead of cleaning up its act, what does it do? It tries to neutralize investigators. Last year, no fewer than 20 caucus members sponsored a bill that would have gutted the Office of Congressional Ethics.

• Misuse of funds: Federal tax records show the caucus' charitable wing spent more money catering its 2008 dinner — $700,000 — than it spent giving out scholarships. The nonprofit is supposed to help "disadvantaged African-Americans," yet it also sank donations into its $4 million Embassy Row digs, golf outings and an annual visit to a Mississippi casino resort. It spends as much decorating its Beltway gala as it does on internships.

Despicably, the Black Caucus Foundation solicits the bulk of donations from industries harmful to the black community, including: the Internet poker industry, cigarette makers, beer brewers and companies that rent TVs, stereos and appliances at high monthly rates.

• Race hustling: The caucus also has hurt African-Americans by pushing "liberal welfare programs that are failing the black community," said West, who's challenging its agenda. Another black Republican, former Rep. J.C. Watts, famously called its leaders "race-hustling poverty pimps." He, in contrast, refused to join their club.

Race-baiting perpetuates their power. They want blacks dependent on them, not just the government, and they do this by scaring them into thinking they're the only thing that can protect them from a racist white establishment.

Caucus leaders, black scholar Walter Williams recently opined, "run a rope-a-dope on their constituents by keeping them focused on allegations of white racism and telling them that salvation lies in voting for them."

• Radicalism: The caucus arranges — at taxpayer expense — subversive congressional delegations that legitimize dangerous foreign regimes.

On a 2009 trip to Havana, seven members broke bread with Castro. They came away so impressed they returned home to inform the public the communist thug was misunderstood. "What endeared me to him was his keen sense of humor, his sense of history and his basic human qualities," gushed Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., ignoring Castro's long record of human-rights abuses.

• Bad influence: In the run-up to the mortgage crisis, the caucus pressed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to ease lending rules for low-income minorities, even demanding nothing-down loans. So fearful of being branded racist were Fannie executives that they donated more than half a million dollars to the caucus. Its last CEO called the group the "conscience of Fannie Mae." And we know how that turned out.

Now the caucus is doubling down on reckless race-based lending. While under investigation, Waters got a provision added to the Dodd-Frank act exempting minority-owned banks from the new oversight. She also inserted an amendment creating 20 offices of "minority inclusion" at financial agencies including the Federal Reserve. The new diversity cops will enforce minority hiring quotas for regulators.

At next week's caucus confab, Waters plans to hold a workshop on her brainchild: "An Introduction to the Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion." Also on the agenda: "Saving the Dream: Homeownership Still Matters" and "Closing the Racial Wealth Gap." Caucus member Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., will take charge on that front while serving on the debt supercommittee.

More concerned with closing the racial wealth gap than the budget gap, he's vowed to push taxes higher on the rich to do it. Waters, for her part, wants the wealthy to fund a government "jobs program of a trillion dollars or more."

It's plain the caucus cares more about advancing its radical redistributionist agenda than preventing another crisis. Redistributing credit did blacks no favors. Redistributing wealth will only make matters worse.

The black community can no longer afford the black caucus' help.

The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted. ~ D.H. Lawrence