Our Readers' Opinions
December 4, 2012
President Carter and the ‘Yes Party’

Tue, Dec 4, 2012

Editor: I do not think anyone can do a fact check on anything that I have written and expose me as telling outright lies or deliberating trying to mislead.I take my credibility too seriously. Over the last month since our media was dominated by a one-sided view of US politics, I decided to present another view.{{more}} I did so knowing fully what I would be up against. But those who come should come with facts, not regurgitated emptiness that could easily be disproved. It is known that am a supporter of the Republican Party, but it is also known that I will not be an apologist for any political party or politicians. I criticize openly — I will not be an excuse factory. Here is some of what my most recent publications have generated.

“I must remind my brother that in 1965 when with Dr. King present, late President

Lyndon Johnson signed the voting rights act, he remarked to a colleague that he had just surrendered the southern states to the Republicans. To this day those states are still Republican and extremely racist,” Ken Wyllie, Searchlight, 02 11 12.

Here are some facts:

September 24, 1957: – Sparking criticism from Democrats such as Senators John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, President Dwight Eisenhower deploys the 82nd Airborne Division to Little Rock, AR to force Democrat Governor Orval Faubus to integrate public schools.

August 4, 1965: – Senate Republican Leader Everett Dirksen (R-IL) overcomes Democrat attempts to block 1965 Voting Rights Act; 94 per cent of Senate Republicans vote for landmark civil right legislation, while 27 per cent of Democrats oppose including Al Gore Sr. Voting Rights Act of 1965, abolishing literacy tests and other measures devised by Democrats to prevent African-Americans from voting, signed into law.

How truthful is the statement attributed to Johnson? Would the south vote for the party which led the charge? Records show that before Johnson [a Texas Democrat] became Vice President he was totally silent on voting rights. In 1968, the first election after Voting Rights Act was passed, Republican Nixon won 32 states, Humphrey 13 and southern whites, feeling abandoned by both parties, gave George Wallace, Democrat turned American Independent [segregationist] Party, five states. Mr Wallace would later return to the Democratic Party. Nixon based his campaign on “Affirmative Action”. In 1969, Nixon adopted it as a federal mandate — the Revised Philadelphia Plan.

First radio call

I arrived in Brooklyn in the heat of the attempt to impeach Nixon and perhaps not as ignorant of the proceedings as a lot of Americans. Thanks to my cousin, Teacher Leonard (Leonard Providence) and his passing to me, all copies of Time magazines. By the way, one of the hot topics in Time was “global cooling” – headlined: “The Iceman Cometh”, a cover page adorned with stalactites and stalagmites. (I wonder how many of those 13 passes CXC have a clue as to what those are?) Imagine my reluctance when my now deceased brother, Julian Roberts, filed papers for me to migrate to Canada. After a year in Toronto, I moved to Brooklyn. Blacks loved Nixon’s Revised Philadelphia Plan. Herbert Humphrey, the Democratic contender, campaigned against. He argued that the policy would decimate poor families, especially blacks. Nixon won with 520 electoral votes and 49 states. Humphrey was right — the illegitimate birthrate began to skyrocket. In 1976, Carter, up against “the man of slogans”, which is the name I give to Ford with his foolishness about “Whip Inflation Now (WIN),” vowed to fix it.

“But Frank you were never a supporter of Obama, why?” When Jimmy Carter became President he first sought to change that, his party which controlled both houses of Congress would have no part of it. That was the last time I supported any Democrat. [Me, An American Election, Searchlight, 02 11 12]

Frank states that any support that he had for President Obama would have gone out the window once he expressed his support for gay marriage. The truth is that Frank would never support Obama or any other Democrat because he is a diehard supporter of what is now called the party of the white male. [Ken Wyllie, Searchlight, 27 11 12]

Mr Wyllie is stating authoritatively that I am lying, but how does he know? Anyone who has listened to me over the years would have heard me repeatedly stating that I supported Democrat Carter. Fact is my first call to any talk show, indeed to any radio, was to support Jimmy Carter. I made the call to Republican talk show host Robert Grant (Gucchione — an Italian; he changed his last to name to avoid discrimination). The exchange was not pretty. He hung up on me. And people write about the lies of Romney without stating a single one.

Welfare cycle

This week I give you one example of what Carter asked for in August 1977: As I pledged during my campaign for the Presidency I am asking the Congress to abolish our existing welfare system, and replace it with a job-oriented program for those able to work and a simplified, uniform, equitable cash assistance program for those in need who are unable to work by virtue of disability, age or family circumstance. The Program for Better Jobs and Income I am proposing will transform the manner in which the Federal government deals with the income needs of the poor, and begin to break the welfare cycle … Provide strong incentives to keep families together rather than tear them apart, by offering the dignity of useful work to family heads and by ending rules which prohibit assistance when the father of a family remains within the household.

The “Yes Party” — the Democrats — laughed at Carter. In 1968, the illegitimate birthrate for blacks was 12 per cent; by 1980 it was approaching 67 per cent and 80 per cent of the crimes against black people were committed by black youths, according the FBI.

Frank E da Silva