"Culture of Blame" and No Responsibility - Maybe Obama ate Lead Paint

He spent six years blaming George W. Bush for his own ineptitude. It is surprising he didn't blame lead paint yet. m/r

Lead Is a Lousy Excuse | The American Spectator

By Ben Stein – 5.4.15

More on Baltimore and its grim prospects.

Herewith a few more respectful thoughts about Baltimore.

First, I am happy to see that now that all decent habits of law enforcement and prosecution have been tossed out by Marilyn Robespierre Mosby, Esq., a sort of calm has returned to one of the most violent cities in America, Baltimore. The sacrifice of the most basic precepts of law have allowed blacks and whites to sing “Kumbaya” together over the dead letters of the Constitution.

But look at something that might scare you even more. Observe how incredibly little it took for that poor confused, weak state’s attorney to fold on basic principles of law.  ...

... Next, and this was suggested to me by a supersmart psychologist, one wonders why the most violent parts of the black population have such a huge hold on the political, judicial, and media mind. The black population is at most 14 percent of the national population. The Hispanic, white, and Asian populations are immensely larger. However, they are also immensely more law-abiding, as a group. (Obviously, the great majority of the black population is also law-abiding.) A small fraction of a small fraction of the population exercises great influence on the nation.

Why is that? Guilt over very real past injustices? Or perhaps, once again, it is that fear of violence. Violence is exciting and persuasive and frightening. It has worked well for some groups. But it does not make poor people rich as a group. It does not put fathers in families. It does not take kids off the streets dealing drugs. It is drama, not work, and work is what pays off in the long run.

Next, all of this nonsense about how the bad behavior of black kids in America is caused by lead based paint.… Just so you know, no one has been able to definitively quantify the effects of lead-based paint on anyone’s IQ or behavior. For a very long time, all of America breathed in immense amounts of lead vapor from gasoline and industrial uses. There was no discernible fall in national IQ from that. Even now, inhalation of lead-based vapors is high in auto repair, cosmetics application, target-shooting instruction, and many other fields. It is far higher in China than here.

There was no national crisis of intelligence or behavior based on that lead. China is obviously growing like mad. No one thinks the Chinese cannot learn.

Only when some smart sociologists and trial lawyers found they could make money and fame by asserting that the cause of misconduct and low scholastic achievement in the black schools was lead-based paint did that emerge as a “cause” of such problems.

It is junk science, my educated friends say. Everyone takes in lead. Not everyone uses it as an excuse. ...

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