Jimmy Carter: A Lifetime of Assaulting America

It is said that only the good die young. If this saying is true, Jimmy Carter living to one hundred years old is not a shock. What is a shock is that he didn’t make it to one hundred and eighty years old. I know I know, most of America loves Jimmah Carter. Thats because they have been bamboozled with his acts of false charity. (More on that later)

Jimmy Carter was first elected to office in his local school board by seeking out, getting the endorsement from and using volunteers who were members of the Ku Klux Klan. Honest he never really was one of them. Honest. What do you say about a man who would pretend to be with the Ku Klux to get elected? Is that a good man? Is that a man with a moral compass?

Jimmy later became Governor of Georgia where he was the champion of something called “the New South”. The New South was a corporatist construct whereby southern employers would no longer act in overtly racist ways and would offer tax incentives and direct subsidies to multinational corporations to locate factories in the South where “right to Work” laws and other systems would brutally prevent organizing and unionization of workers. So, automobile manufacturing and electronics moved from Unionized racially diverse shops in the North to the South. There was no official racism here, but it didn’t take a genius to immediately notice that the jobs in these factories were racially stratified, and that Black Americans, men particularly, had no potential career ladder. Does implementing that seem like a exemplar of morality would do? Really?

Then somehow, the DNC decided Jimmah Carter was just the guy to run for President. As President, Jimmy was a complete and total disaster. His “enlighten Christian” viewpoint decided that the Shah of Iran was not a morally perfect person, so he happily allowed the Ayatollah Khomeini and his bizarre government of Communist Islamicists to take over Ian and destabilize completely the Middle East . Make no mistake Jimmah Carters “enlightened Christian” foreign policy has meant not only the enslavement of an entire nation, but the direct economic and physical oppression of Jews, Christians and secularists in Iran and the direct murder of thousands of homosexuals, lesbians, feminists and people who openly proclaimed either an incorrect view of Islam, or that Islam was not the correct view. To clear thinking people, the Shah, who honestly was no prize either, was the more moral alternative. “Oh ooops”. That’s How Carter’s whole presidency went: One “Oh ooops” after another each of them weakening the United States globally and internally. Believing that no one can accidentally screw up 100% of the time, you would almost believe Carter was weakening America on purpose.

Even worse than Carter’s horrific effect on foreign policy were his effects on the American Working Class. The American Heathcare crisis is a direct result of the Carter Administration. It is not well remembered now, but in the late 1970’s most Americans had Health Insurance, and those plans were generous. HMO’s were very rare and basically poverty policies. Average employer provided Health insurance in those days even paid for things like facelifts for the middle aged. Hospitals did not want to take Medicare patients. Medicare paid the least. A curious thing happened in the Carter Administration. The Carter Administration began to be concerned with the cost going forward of Lyndon Johnson’s then decade old Great Society programs. One of those was Medicare. Medicare covered Retirees. The Carter Administration noted that eventually the Baby boomers would be a huge bubble in the retirement system and a huge cost in the Medicare system. Carter sought to eliminate this problem and appointed Joe Califano to reform Medicare. Califano came up with a strict program of diagnosis related payments and maximum days for hospital stays. They cut the benefits.

Naturally, when this happened one would have expected hospitals to refuse Medicare patients. That actually happened at first, but it turns out almost every hospital receives some kind of federal funding. The Carter Administration tied federal funding to accepting Medicare patients. The Hospital industry caved. As they did, private insurance companies noticed, and the era of managed care began. Every year private insurance cuts back on what it will pay for. Fewer days after surgery, lower prices for care to the doctors and hospitals, higher deductibles, higher premiums. This is all a direct result of the Carter Administration. This was the start of the joint government/corporate war on the American Citizen.

As a result of the Johnson Administration, America built high rise affordable housing projects. Generally American federally subsidized housing had not been built this way. In the Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower Administrations, subsidized housing had been units built in standard developments that had rental units that the Federal government subsidized. Some of these wee in apartment buildings, some were in suburban residential developments. Starting in the Kennedy Administration some developers began using combinations of subsidies and grants to build gigantic apartment complexes that were 100% subsidized units, creating concentrated neighborhoods of all poor people. This housing was because it was tall and dense very expensive to build per square foot. This housing also was very expensive to maintain and became a concentration of criminal activity wherever it was built. President carter sought to solve these issues by tearing down Federally subsidized apartment blocks and having a friend who ran a housing program in Georgia, Millard Fuller, go national with Habitat for Humanity to build affordable nonsubsidized housing. America developed an almost instant housing affordability crisis and a homelessness crisis. Coincidence?

The real problem with Habitat for Humanity is that it too is part of the Government/Corporate war on the American Citizen. Did your or anyone’s taxes go down when the Federal Government stopped building owning and managing affordable housing blocks? Uh No. But that direct benefit of taxation to the nation’s poorest citizens and the tangent benefits to society housing the poor created, disappeared. Habitat for humanity exists on donations, meaning that the citizens whose taxes did not go down when building Federal ended, pay again by donating to Habitat for Humanity. This Carter endorsed charity that Carter is famous for working with in his Post Presidency, also builds a tenth the number of homes that were built by the Federal Government. So, the housing need is not being addressed by Habitat for Humanity.

The Habitat for Humanity story is darker though than the fact that the program is insufficient to build the number of units needed and did not decrease the tax burden by eliminating Federally Built owned and funded housing. Habitat for Humanity, by being the nation’s largest home builder and by paying the workers who construct the homes nothing, is a net drag on the economy and suppresses construction worker wages nationwide. When the Federal government was in the house and apartment building business, all the construction jobs on the job site, if the units were part of a larger suburban development as in the Truman era or part of a mega block in the Johnson era, were Union Prevailing wage jobs. High pay high benefit first world construction jobs. Carter’s embrace of Fuller’s habitat for Humanity eliminated not just thousands of construction jobs, but thousands of the highest paid construction jobs. It also eliminated the sales of tools, uniforms, boots, meals from the roach coach for all of those workers. Habitat for Humanity for all the feel goodness of volunteers plinking hammers is a net drag on the America economy and a direct assault on the livelihood of every American construction worker. I was once one of those assaulted construction workers.

Habitat for Humanity is a part of the elitist construct that American workers are overpaid, over benefitted, spoiled and should be replaced. It’s not a charity of high morality. Like so much of the Carter legacy, it is a cancer on the nation.

President Biden, the one man who outshines President Carter’s record in office for the most harm done to the republic has declared January 9th as a day to remember Jimmy Carter. I will be. I for one will be celebrating his long overdue death.