The Total Failure Of The War On Poverty

[vt]

We're losing the war on poverty because we have forgotten the original goal, as LBJ stated it half a century ago: "to give our fellow citizens a fair chance to develop their own capacities."

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303345104579282760272285556?mod=WS J_Opinion_LEADTop

OPINION

Robert Rector: How the War on Poverty Was Lost

Fifty years and $20 trillion later, LBJ's goal to help the poor become self-supporting has failed.

By ROBERT RECTOR

Jan. 7, 2014 6:36 p.m. ET

On Jan. 8, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson used his State of the Union address to announce an ambitious government undertaking. "This administration today, here and now," he thundered, "declares unconditional war on poverty in America."
Fifty years later, we're losing that war. Fifteen percent of Americans still live in poverty, according to the official census poverty report for 2012, unchanged since the mid-1960s. Liberals argue that we aren't spending enough money on poverty-fighting programs, but that's not the problem. In reality, we're losing the war on poverty because we have forgotten the original goal, as LBJ stated it half a century ago: "to give our fellow citizens a fair chance to develop their own capacities."
The federal government currently runs more than 80 means-tested welfare programs that provide cash, food, housing, medical care and targeted social services to poor and low-income Americans. Government spent $916 billion on these programs in 2012 alone, and roughly 100 million Americans received aid from at least one of them, at an average cost of $9,000 per recipient. (That figure doesn't include Social Security or Medicare benefits.) Federal and state welfare spending, adjusted for inflation, is 16 times greater than it was in 1964. If converted to cash, current means-tested spending is five times the amount needed to eliminate all official poverty in the U.S.
LBJ promised that the war on poverty would be an "investment" that would "return its cost manifold to the entire economy." But the country has invested $20.7 trillion in 2011 dollars over the past 50 years. What does America have to show for its investment? Apparently, almost nothing: The official poverty rate persists with little improvement.
Enlarge Image


President Johnson, promoting a new campaign to help the poor, visits sharecropper William David Marlow and his family on a farm near Rocky Mount, N.C., in May 1964. Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image




That is in part because the government's poverty figures are misleading. Census defines a family as poor based on income level but doesn't count welfare benefits as a form of income. Thus, government means-tested spending can grow infinitely while the poverty rate remains stagnant.
Not even government, though, can spend $9,000 per recipient a year and have no impact on living standards. And it shows: Current poverty has little resemblance to poverty 50 years ago. According to a variety of government sources, including census data and surveys by federal agencies, the typical American living below the poverty level in 2013 lives in a house or apartment that is in good repair, equipped with air conditioning and cable TV. His home is larger than the home of the average nonpoor French, German or English man. He has a car, multiple color TVs and a DVD player. More than half the poor have computers and a third have wide, flat-screen TVs. The overwhelming majority of poor Americans are not undernourished and did not suffer from hunger for even one day of the previous year.
Do higher living standards for the poor mean that the war on poverty has succeeded? No. To judge the effort, consider LBJ's original aim. He sought to give poor Americans "opportunity not doles," planning to shrink welfare dependence not expand it. In his vision, the war on poverty would strengthen poor Americans' capacity to support themselves, transforming "taxeaters" into "taxpayers." It would attack not just the symptoms of poverty but, more important, remove the causes.
By that standard, the war on poverty has been a catastrophe. The root "causes" of poverty have not shrunk but expanded as family structure disintegrated and labor-force participation among men dropped. A large segment of the population is now less capable of self-sufficiency than when the war on poverty began.
The collapse of marriage in low-income communities has played a substantial role in the declining capacity for self-support. In 1963, 6% of American children were born out of wedlock. Today the number stands at 41%. As benefits swelled, welfare increasingly served as a substitute for a bread-winning husband in the home.
According to the Heritage Foundation's analysis, children raised in the growing number of single-parent homes are four times more likely to be living in poverty than children reared by married parents of the same education level. Children who grow up without a father in the home are also more likely to suffer from a broad array of social and behavioral problems. The consequences continue into adulthood: Children raised by single parents are three times more likely to end up in jail and 50% more likely to be poor as adults.
A lack of parental work poses another major problem. Even in good economic times, a parent in the average poor family works just 800 hours a year, roughly 16 hours weekly, according to census data. Low levels of work mean lower earnings and higher levels of dependence.
So how might we restore LBJ's original mission in the war on poverty? First, as the economy improves, the government should require able-bodied, non-elderly adult recipients in federal welfare programs to work or prepare for work as a condition of receiving benefits. We should also reduce the antimarriage incentives rife within welfare programs. For instance, current programs sharply cut benefits if a mother marries a working father. Reducing these restrictions would begin a long-term effort to rebuild the family in low-income communities.
This would be a better battle plan for eradicating poverty in America than spending more money on failed programs. And it would help achieve LBJ's objective for the poor to "replace their despair with opportunity."
Mr. Rector is a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

[Forrest]

Re: The Total Failure Of The War On Poverty

Fifty years and $20 trillion later, LBJ's goal to help the poor become self-supporting has failed.

By ROBERT RECTOR

Jan. 7, 2014 6:36 p.m. ET

On Jan. 8, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson used his State of the Union address to announce an ambitious government undertaking. "This administration today, here and now," he thundered, "declares unconditional war on poverty in America. I hated the guy...I was only eight, but those eyes convinced me he was not a nice person to know.

Fifty years later, we're losing that war. Fifteen percent of Americans still live in poverty, according to the official census poverty report for 2012, unchanged since the mid-1960s. Liberals argue that we aren't spending enough money on poverty-fighting programs, but that's not the problem. In reality, we're losing the war on poverty because we have forgotten the original goal, as LBJ stated it half a century ago: "to give our fellow citizens a fair chance to develop their own capacities." Education and a few goats would work better...just think, all those poor people in India doing so well that they can at least feed themselves on the gift of a few goats to add to their vegetable gardens, and they probably don't know how to read. Of course, the person has to have the ability to grow a little grass, but that's not very complicated. And goats eat darned near anything.

The federal government currently runs more than 80 means-tested welfare programs that provide cash, food, housing, medical care and targeted social services to poor and low-income Americans. Government spent $916 billion on these programs in 2012 alone, and roughly 100 million Americans received aid from at least one of them, at an average cost of $9,000 per recipient.

That figure doesn't include Social Security or Medicare benefits.

Federal and state welfare spending, adjusted for inflation, is 16 times greater than it was in 1964. If converted to cash, current means-tested spending is five times the amount needed to eliminate all official poverty in the U.S.

LBJ promised that the war on poverty would be an "investment" that would "return its cost manifold to the entire economy." But the country has invested $20.7 trillion in 2011 dollars over the past 50 years. What does America have to show for its investment? Apparently, almost nothing: The official poverty rate persists with little improvement. Obviously, we should change something.

Enlarge Image

http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/im...0107134254.jpg
President Johnson, promoting a new campaign to help the poor, visits sharecropper William David Marlow and his family on a farm near Rocky Mount, N.C., in May 1964. Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image

That is in part because the government's poverty figures are misleading. Census defines a family as poor based on income level but doesn't count welfare benefits as a form of income. Thus, government means-tested spending can grow infinitely while the poverty rate remains stagnant.

Not even government, though, can spend $9,000 per recipient a year and have no impact on living standards. And it shows:

Current poverty has little resemblance to poverty 50 years ago.

According to a variety of government sources, including census data and surveys by federal agencies, the typical American living below the poverty level in 2013 lives in a house or apartment that is in good repair, equipped with air conditioning and cable TV. His home is larger than the home of the average non-poor French, German or English man. He has a car, multiple color TVs and a DVD player. More than half the poor have computers and a third have wide, flat-screen TVs. The overwhelming majority of poor Americans are not undernourished and did not suffer from hunger for even one day of the previous year.

I do not expect the poor to go hungry in America, unless they refuse to work! Not having work to give them is insane...I do not think going back to cutting lawns with a pair of scissors and a scythe is necessary, exactly, but how about push mowers? It's healthy, and it's good for the environment.


Do higher living standards for the poor mean that the war on poverty has succeeded? No. To judge the effort, consider LBJ's original aim. He sought to give poor Americans "opportunity not doles," planning to shrink welfare dependence not expand it. In his vision, the war on poverty would strengthen poor Americans' capacity to support themselves, transforming "taxeaters" into "taxpayers." It would attack not just the symptoms of poverty but, more important, remove the causes. By that standard, the war on poverty has been a catastrophe. The root "causes" of poverty have not shrunk but expanded as family structure disintegrated and labor-force participation among men dropped. A large segment of the population is now less capable of self-sufficiency than when the war on poverty began.

The collapse of marriage in low-income communities has played a substantial role in the declining capacity for self-support. In 1963, 6% of American children were born out of wedlock. Today the number stands at 41%. As benefits swelled, welfare increasingly served as a substitute for a bread-winning husband in the home. According to the Heritage Foundation's analysis, children raised in the growing number of single-parent homes are four times more likely to be living in poverty than children reared by married parents of the same education level. Children who grow up without a father in the home are also more likely to suffer from a broad array of social and behavioral problems. The consequences continue into adulthood: Children raised by single parents are three times more likely to end up in jail and 50% more likely to be poor as adults.

A lack of parental work poses another major problem. Even in good economic times, a parent in the average poor family works just 800 hours a year, roughly 16 hours weekly, according to census data. Low levels of work mean lower earnings and higher levels of dependence.


So how might we restore LBJ's original mission in the war on poverty?

First, as the economy improves, the government should require able-bodied, non-elderly adult recipients in federal welfare programs to work or prepare for work as a condition of receiving benefits. We should also reduce the anti-marriage incentives rife within welfare programs. For instance, current programs sharply cut benefits if a mother marries a working father. Reducing these restrictions would begin a long-term effort to rebuild the family in low-income communities.

This would be a better battle plan for eradicating poverty in America than spending more money on failed programs. And it would help achieve LBJ's objective for the poor to "replace their despair with opportunity."
Mr. Rector is a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

$9000.00 per year per person would buy a lot of goats...and we have a lot of vacant land in America owned by the 'Gub'mint'. Goat herding requires no talent, the milk is sweet, and makes great cheese...it really should be very easy to create some jobs. Tamed and trained does of purebred quality are only a few hundred bucks or so, and I'm sure a small herd will do for most families...along with a vegetable garden.

Hmmm...just think of all the healthful benefits...out door air, a little exercise....and no doubt, a great willingness to learn to use a push mower.

[Woodsman]

Re: The Total Failure Of The War On Poverty

We're losing the war on poverty because we have forgotten the original goal, as LBJ stated it half a century ago: "to give our fellow citizens a fair chance to develop their own capacities."

Jan. 7, 2014 6:36 p.m. ET

On Jan. 8, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson used his State of the Union address to announce an ambitious government undertaking. "This administration today, here and now," he thundered, "declares unconditional war on poverty in America."
Fifty years later, we're losing that war.

Puh-leeze. Looking to Heritage - and especially a pr*ck like Rector - for help on solving issues of poverty is like putting a pimp in charge of an all girls school.

What Heritage produces is slick propaganda and they are very good at it. By every objective criteria they are winning. I believe they will have their way. And not that anyone gives a damn, but there's the facts of history to contend with regarding the failure of the War on Poverty and the Great Society that Rector fails to mention. Recall what other legislation was passed in 1964 - The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

The War on Poverty and the Great Society were mortally wounded in the battlefields of Vietnam. Coors and Weyrich merely finished them off with a coup de grâce to the head. MLK spoke plainly about it almost a year to the day before he was murdered:

"There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such. Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home...[Y]ou may not know it, my friends, but it is estimated that we spend $500,000 to kill each enemy soldier, while we spend only fifty-three dollars for each person classified as poor, and much of that fifty-three dollars goes for salaries to people that are not poor. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor, and attack it as such."

- "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam". April 30, 1967. Riverside Church, New York

I believe that Heritage is dominated and funded by a cohort of not so crypto-fascists dedicated to advancing a decades long program to turn America into a plantation and its citizens into serfs. With Coors' money, Weyrich took the Powell Memorandum as a blueprint for dismantling nearly every bit of progress this country managed gain since 1963. And they've been fabulously successful at it. I believe they are part of the problem and offer no solutions other than more for the wealthy and less for everyone else.

As for Rector, I consider him a sick joke. Without the financial support provided him by the Kochs he'd be laboring in obscurity. He knows everything about poverty and nothing about the poor. He doesn't believe children are impacted by poverty. He thinks that if a person owns a refrigerator then they cannot be genuinely poor. Rector has spent his career villainizing the poor and denying the very notion that anything can be done to help them. The phony $15 trillion spent on poverty since 1964 figures they like to toss about is full of holes and essentially meaningless in context. But for the sake of discussion, accept it and compare it with the $7.6 trillion spent on war and insecurity since 2001.

It's all about priorities and who gets what, I get it. And it sure was a clever trick to use the middle class' fear of losing ground as a fulcrum to turn them against the poor on behalf of the wealthy. Heritage and their confederates have all but won, no doubt about that. It's just too bad that the majority of Americans will be left with ashes because of them.

[vt]

Re: The Total Failure Of The War On Poverty

I agree that Vietnam, Iraq, etc. were also expenditures which should have not been entered. That is another issue that has already been addressed.

But just because you want to attack the source, the issue is valid. The poor have not been helped.

The government unions have been beneficiaries, as have businesses feeding on the poverty program spending.

The poor and millions of others need jobs. They need an education system that gives them skills to find work. Government programs have failed us.

Smearing the messenger is an admission you have no answer. Why hasn't the liberal press addressed this? Ah, it's because they are not journalists.
Many on the right are not journalists either.

Woodsman, you need to come up with something other than attacking a source. The public is tired of the political infighting. Address the real issues, not repeat the party mantra.

[Penguin]

Re: The Total Failure Of The War On Poverty

Interesting take Woodsman.

Sometimes I just shake my head. To anyone who has grown up in an area of extreme and/or chronic poverty the article posted rings hollow. It really does. You know immediately that Robert Rector knows of it only at arms length? Why? Because to anyone who grew up knowing what causes most of it there is no mystery at all as to why poverty has continued or even gotten worse. We know. As a matter of fact I'll go you one further: We (as a nation) chose to take this course through policy choices. Maybe it was a bill of goods that we swallowed. Maybe we were hoodwinked.

But the fact remains that we chose to make poverty worse and throw those on the edge into it.

How? By systematically lowering the quality of job that our economy produces. This was done through many means I'll grant you. Putting labor in direct competition with those who have lower labor, environmental, etc standards. Actively pursuing a strong dollar policy that allows a chronic and ongoing trade deficit. Allowing VAT and other market barriers by other countries while abandoning any protection for US labor. By actively changing the balance of power between that of labor/capital and that of capital/government. The list goes on an on.

We bludgeoned the nascent black middle class like a baby seal. We destroyed the union/coal powered Appalachian middle class soon thereafter. Next came the steel industry. Then the ship producing industry. Then the airplane industry. Now we are getting around to the car industry. In case after case we have systematically sought out and destroyed areas of blue collar middle class.

What exactly did the geniuses in charge think would happen to those who would have worked in these industries? Just quietly take their place in a corner, stop breeding, and wait for their allotted time to die?

Anyone who speaks of poverty and never mentions a jobs/industrial policy is a fraud. And his work is a joke.

Will

[Woodsman]

Re: The Total Failure Of The War On Poverty

The source is as important as the information it delivers, vt. The source and the information it provides are two sides of the same coin. Why would I lobotomize myself by not considering the source of the information, who funds them, what their interests are, etc.? How does that make sense in terms of understanding politics and economics? How is it a smear to point this out?

I don't necessarily disagree with the majority of assertions you make here with regard to cause and effect, but the politics are real even if the players employ deception in their practice of it. The right started this and they are just about finished with it. The left does not exist in the way you seem to understand it. It hasn't for decades. I know you are a man of good conscience and recognize the cognitive dissonance you and other conservatives of good will must experience as you watch the truth of history unfold before you. I experienced it too, first hand.

Add to that the near psychological impossibility of getting someone to accept information contrary to their conditioning - and please believe me when I say I mean no condescension by this - well, I expect we'll be chasing each other's tail here until one or both get exhausted. So if it makes it easier for you and I to understand each other and maintain collegiality, consider this view part of my unalterable conditioning. The way I see it, the right and left share the burden of truth, vt. It falls on the right for initiating it and on the left for being too cowardly and venal to oppose it. The truth is we all got snookered, and I hope that's some consolation for you and me.

And I will say it again, vt. I have no party, no affiliation, no allegiance to any political party or movement. I know you find that impossible to accept, but maybe if I say it enough you just will.

[lektrode]

Re: The Total Failure Of The War On Poverty

Interesting take Woodsman.....

We bludgeoned the nascent black middle class like a baby seal. We destroyed the union/coal powered Appalachian middle class soon thereafter. Next came the steel industry. Then the ship producing industry. Then the airplane industry. Now we are getting around to the car industry. In case after case we have systematically sought out and destroyed areas of blue collar middle class.

What exactly did the geniuses in charge think would happen to those who would have worked in these industries? Just quietly take their place in a corner, stop breeding, and wait for their allotted time to die?

Anyone who speaks of poverty and never mentions a jobs/industrial policy is a fraud. And his work is a joke.

+1
while i'd prefer we not shoot the messengers - since The Message _isnt_ whether or not that Rector or his benefactors is/are The Problem - which this piece very well defines as The Failure of US .gov POLICY, industrial, labor, welfare ALL are THE PROBLEM - and typing as one who has been... hesitant to say 'victimized' only for lack of a better term - will say that the flip side of "the lefts" POV on the failure of the 'war on poverty' (along with the absolute failure of the 'war on drugs', which "the right" is just as guilty as the other in denying) - is the plainly evident FACT that the 'social-services-welfare/.edu industrial complex has consumed nearly as much, IF NOT MORE of what some on "the left" utterly fail to admit is A SCARCITY OF RESOURCES - and the lib-dems are THE GUILTIEST of parties involved in the ALL OUT ASSAULT on THE SOLVENCY and ultimately THE SECURITY of The US .gov - which used-to be defined as WE, The People.

but is now - in all actuality - THEM in the political class.

the various industrial complexes have grown to such OBSCENELY and abusively gluttonous scales - that ITS A WONDER THAT THERES ANY RESOURCES LEFT AT ALL

and the witnessing past 1/2doz years or so of the 'sausage making' process in the beltway - beginning with coronation of queen nancy and prince harry in 2006 - and THEIR ABJECT FAILURE TO EVEN COME UP WITH A BUDGET - coupled with the crowning of the current occupant and culminating/consolidating their power over all 3 branches of the .gov - following thru for the benefit of their biggest campaign contributors in the accomodation of the BIGGEST ORGANIZED CRIME OF THE PAST CENTURY (at least)

has proven beyond any shadow of doubt - to me and MILLIONS OF PEOPLE JUST LIKE ME - on either/both ends of the political spectrum - that The US .gov has become everything that the founders risked _everything_ to both leave behind in the old world and fought to the death to defeat here in the new world.

and its my personal belief that if they were to come back from the hereafter - THEY WOULD BURN WASHINGTON TO THE GROUND AND START OVER.

short of that - the only way any of this will EVER BE FIXED - is to purge the beltway, beginning with TERM LIMITS FOR CONGRESS.

i also think having returning to the prev practice of having the individual states governors appoint their senators (? IIRC how it was done way back when) would go a long way to accomplishing this

there simply is NO ACCOUNTABILITY INSIDE THE BELTWAY ANY LONGER - and the liberal-dominated op/ed depts of the lamestream media-industrial complex is A HUGE part of the problem

and no offense, will (and woody) - but...
its why i hafta chuckle a bit when 'the left' gets all bent outa shape with 'the right' POV - before fox, there simple wasnt any 'alternative' POV - and altho i'm in full agreement that ole ruperts ownership of the WSJ has left me wondering whats happened to them - who else could we look to for some sort of fair/balanced opposition to the liberal-dominated lamestream media that only focuses on that which makes their team look good - while flatly refusing to connect the dots on
anything - and i do mean EVERYTHING that doesnt?

[Penguin]

Re: The Total Failure Of The War On Poverty

Good points lektrode.

Government has been and continues to be a big problem. I agree with you, the way it is run, the way power is allocated and accounted for is a bad joke, and it is very hard to see a way forward at this point. You won't get an argument from me on that. The war on poverty, is all its various forms, has been conducted in ways that seem to me a bit crazy.

My point was simply that there is a reason that the good ship "War on Poverty" hasn't moved forward very far in addition to government incompetence. It is hard to do so when you have people in the boat who are intentionally shooting holes in the bottom of it. When you actively conduct business in such a way as to create more poverty you aren't going to eliminate it.

EJ and others have mentioned the MSM as a main problem. I agree with both you and them that it is a problem. And I also agree that it has helped make government a much more distant and unaccountable organization. But I think there is another factor here at work that needs mentioning. The power balance between capital and government.

I agree that if the founders came back from the grave they would be absolutely appalled at what government has devolved into. But I don't think it would be solely for the reasons you cite. They would also be absolutely astounded with the entire enterprise called "corporate law". The left isn't the only bunch willing to read things into the constitution that are most certainly not there.

The fact that the supreme court has given many rights to corporations that the framers reserved solely to actual persons would, I think, enrage them. Corporate charters were a state's issue. There were severe limits placed on how they could conduct business. Their charters were temporary. They couldn't own parts of other corporations. They were forbidden from contributing to political campaigns. All of this right here in the good old US.... right up until a group of lawyers invented a whole new set of laws for them.

And you can't tell me that allowing corporations to become permanent, massive, globe spanning enterprises with many of the same rights as persons hasn't had something to do with the fact that government and capital have become joined at the hip in the unholy alliance that we around here call the FIRE economy.

Will

[dcarrigg]

Re: The Total Failure Of The War On Poverty

Why would I lobotomize myself by not considering the source of the information, who funds them, what their interests are, etc.?

Remember when Heritage hosted the Project for a New American Century and advocated war with Iraq publicly on the internet in the late 90s? Remember when they were run by Wolfowitz and Kagan and Rumsfeld with an iron fist for a Neocon worldview? Pepperidge Farms remembers.

Now, with the same general funders and trustees (although Jimmy DeMint always likes to spice things up), they are promoting the "Tea Party."

Same faces. Same GOP. Different game.

It used to be Heritage.org was full of lies meant to sell America on war with Saddam.

Now it's full of lies meant to sell America on war with poor.

Where are those WMDs at, Granny Coors? Where they at?

In the end of the day, I don't care if you think the "war on poverty" did any good or not. I don't care which party you support. There is no reason anyone should believe anything put out by this group of old stiff jerks that lied straight to the faces of every American to get us into a war for no reason just a short decade ago.

Here's Horowitz preaching the same thing over on "Rupert's ticker" today. What's his solution?

"First, eliminate all minimum-wage and occupational-licensure laws."

Talk about radical. They don't just want to undo the New Deal. They want to undo the late middle ages now and ban guilds, apprentices, journeymen, masters, licensing, and everything that built the middle class. Not to mention watching quality standards fall to crap, I can't even dream of a world where Dr. Nick actually gets to keep a medical practice without a degree.

People are nuts.

[lektrode]

Re: The Total Failure Of The War On Poverty

......
......
.........
The fact that the supreme court has given many rights to corporations that the framers reserved solely to actual persons would, I think, enrage them. Corporate charters were a state's issue. There were severe limits placed on how they could conduct business. Their charters were temporary. They couldn't own parts of other corporations. They were forbidden from contributing to political campaigns. All of this right here in the good old US.... right up until a group of lawyers invented a whole new set of laws for them.

personally - i think theres waaaay too many lawyers and political 'scientists' infesting the .gov

not sure how it could be done - but think there ought to be some sort of formula that determines the make up of the house of reps, in particular - with lawyers allowed only the % that they exist within or 'at large' within the economy - to me its NUTS that most of em are lawyers (never mind the political 'science' bunch - w/o meaning to offend them 2 groups) -

esp when it comes down to the activists - both elected and UN-elected - re-defining the definitions of amendments to the US Constitution - to suit the whim du jure

esp since one of the legal brigade's most significant skills is to delay-deny-obfuscate whenever it suits THEM or their agenda.

and - once again - i'll point to how the NH legislature - IIRC, the largest legislative body in The US (thanks to dcarrigg for that stat) - is essentially a VOLUNTEER group - made up of the full spectrum of the private sector - and manages to get The Public's biz done in a 30day session - with no sales nor income taxes - and manages quite well at that - for near 400years now.

And you can't tell me that allowing corporations to become permanent, massive, globe spanning enterprises with many of the same rights as persons hasn't had something to do with the fact that government and capital have become joined at the hip in the unholy alliance that we around here call the FIRE economy.

nor would i even try = +1 couldnt agree more.

[lektrode]

Re: The Total Failure Of The War On Poverty

.....
Where are those WMDs at, Granny Coors? Where they at?...

People are nuts.

with ALL due respect dc - and you _know_ i have plenty - it would appear they are being loaded onto boats ???

and +100
on yer sign-off.
;)

[vt]

Re: The Total Failure Of The War On Poverty

Jobs program? Government can't create jobs, but we also need private industry to stretch to create some. We have structural problems in the economy that are complex, and it will take time to reach a normalized job market.

But $20 trillion with very little to show? Where's the accountability?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q06u0n9UfW0

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreyd...ng-them-first/

http://billingsgazette.com/news/opin...f063b2c5f.html

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2011...llion-per-job/

[vt]

Re: The Total Failure Of The War On Poverty

DC,

The messengers on the Right AND Left are suspect with anything they say. That said, why hasn't a respectable jounalist come out with the facts as Heritage has done? They MSM simply ignores issues such as worthless government spending because it does not meet their political agenda.

So what if a right leaning source publishes facts other won't. The facts are still legitimate. The anti poverty program was a waste of funds as it did not help the poor.

We can argue all day about political biases of articles, but the poor and middle class need job opportunities now.

You are right that people at BOTH ends of the political spectrum are nuts, but they also are devious.

[Woodsman]

Re: The Total Failure Of The War On Poverty

... why hasn't a respectable jounalist come out with the facts as Heritage has done? They MSM simply ignores issues such as worthless government spending because it does not meet their political agenda.

Whose political agenda is that?

[vt]

Re: The Total Failure Of The War On Poverty

They're all FIRE oriented, but all except FOX are biased for liberals and the current administration.