Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) speaks to the Detroit Economic Club at the Motor City Casino Hotel on Friday, Dec. 6, 2013.
(Tanya Moutzalias | MLive.com)
Democrats are reacting to Rand Paul reaching out to minorities in Michigan, but in a state where the black population has been decimated by Democratic big government policies, they had little productive to add to the conversation.
“How are you supposed to make child support payments if you’ve been in prison, and the best job you can get is $9 an hour?” Sen. Rand Paul asked at the opening of a new GOP office on Livernois Avenue in Detroit.
State Rep. Thomas Stallworth (D), who leads the Michigan Legislative Black Caucus, said urban communities need more help than tax relief would provide for low-income residents.
“Detroit and other urban cities throughout Michigan don’t need this type of help,” Stallworth said in a statement. “We need investment in our communities that bring good paying jobs, and funding for education and training.”
Stallworth is exactly the kind of Democrat who has been overseeing the mass the exodus of productive taxpayers due to liberal policies, leaving poor black communities behind to sift through the rubble. Stallworth and other Democrats insist on funneling more money to corrupt officials in their party in order to keep funding their own pockets, while Detroit goes bankrupt, literally. Judge Steven Rhodes recently ruled that the city can go ahead with the filing.
The response by Democrats focused on Paul’s economic message and left issues that are of high importance to the black community, issues that Democrats have clearly failed the black community, off the table.
Though Sen. Rand Paul proposed to introduce legislation next week that would turn zip codes with unemployment rates over 1.5 times the average into zones where federal income taxes would be reduced to 5 percent, as well as eliminating capital gains taxes to attract potential residents and entrepreneurs, his focus was on child support, prison and the war on drugs.
“These are things you haven’t heard Republicans talking about,” he said. “So I’m glad to be part of this today, not only just to mean that Republicans are showing up where we haven’t been, but with a new message and policy.”
“Sen. Paul was a vocal opponent of the auto rescue, which saved over a million jobs, and led the Republican effort to shut down the government, costing Michigan’s economy hundreds of millions,” said state Democratic Party spokesman Josh Pugh.
What Pugh seems to have left out of his criticism, was that is was Democratic policies that bankrupted the auto-industry to begin with, as well as Ford and others who never accepted the bail-out money leading the industry comeback. It appears that Pugh is offering the same old ideas to fix the catastrophe those ideas caused, all to the detriment of the very people Rand Paul is reaching out to.
“Today’s opening of this office is the beginning of a new Republican Party,” Paul said. “This is going to be a Republican Party that is in big cities and small cities, in the countryside, in the city. It’s going to be about bringing a message that is popular no matter where you’re from, whether you’re rich or poor, whether you’re black, white or brown.”
Senator Paul talked also about how the war on drugs has disproportionately incarcerated blacks and Latinos, and said he was advocating that judges have more discretion over sentencing in drug cases. He highlighted that many convicted felons can’t vote yet have trouble finding jobs, which makes it near impossible to avoid dependence in their lives.
“Something has to change,” he said. “The war on drugs has gone awry.”
Paul said Friday that he asked retiring Sen. Carl Levin (D) to support the legislation. Levin’s open seat is the GOP’s first real chance at winning in the state since the 1990s, and now with the failed rollout of ObamaCare, the seat is rated a Toss-Up on the PPD 2014 Senate Map.
“Targeted tax incentives, or removing tax disincentives for those who live or work in the city, could help as part of a strategy for Detroit’s future,” Levin said in a statement.
“However, no plan can succeed unless it includes investments in public services and infrastructure, like education and neighborhood renovation, to help build a foundation for a safe and prosperous community.”
It is hard to imagine “a safe and prosperous community” without a police force that responds when it is called. The city has driven away so many people due to its tax burden that the funds to send police on emergency calls are simply not there. Levin and other Democrats refuse to admit, or perhaps comprehend, that it is their big government policies who are hurting those very citizens they claim to champion, inner city Americans.
Not all Democrats were close-minded in their response to Rand Paul making his proposals. Former Democratic Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm actually sounded as if she agreed with the plan. Granholm presided over the precipitous decline of prosperity in Detroit and greater Michigan, so perhaps she is just reacting to the political winds she sees starting to blow in a right-ward direction. She tweeted:
Agree: R.Paul in Detroit calling 4 urban zones w/low fed taxes & relaxed immigration rules 2 attract entrepreneurs. Been sayin’ that too-
— Jennifer Granholm (@JenGranholm) December 6, 2013
If the GOP hopes to make Granholm’s fear a reality, they must do better with urban, particularly black voters in 2016. Thus far, Sen. Rand Paul has made a concerted, serious effort to earn the trust and support of minority voters. Last spring, a leading black evangelical minister told PPD that he, “would support Senator Rand Paul with an enthusiasm never before for a Republican candidate,” should he choose to run in 2016.
When asked about his plans for 2016, Paul joked. “There’s two votes in my family ” he said. “My wife has both of them. Both of them are ‘no’ votes right now.
“So if I’m a very able politician, I’ll tell you in a year whether I’m able to persuade my wife. Right now, I don’t know yet.”
