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It's time to end the war on poverty
I remember when Lyndon Johnson began the War on Poverty in 64. For a time I was a foot soldier on the front lines first in Model Cities than in the Welfare System. Back then as now the cries were for solving the pressing problems of hunger and deprivation and helping the poor through new affordable housing, education, job training, community deve-lopment and medical care. We are in a quagmire.The amount of blood and treasure committed to this unconditional war is impossible to tally. Our major cities have become war zones with gangs running unchecked. Philadelphia alone, the City of Brotherly Love, had 406 recorded homicides in 06 and 391 in 07. That is not counting the rapes, robberies, molestations and assaults. This is the result of governing with feelings and not thinking about the consequences political correctness gone amok. We are still reeling from the backlash created by the attention the War on Poverty gave to Black America. Forty-four years later and in spite of everything done we hear candidates like Hillary, Barack Obama and John Edwards, railing about the plight of the poor and homeless. The lack of money spent on the children and our crumbling schools discounting that we have one of the highest rates of per pupil spending in the world is always worked into the diatribes. Anti-war Democrats are still complaining that spending on the War (then it was Vietnam) is choking off the funds needed to help our people at home. It is curious that Sen. Obamas Global Poverty Act (S.2433 got some help from Sen. Biden in his attempted to rush it through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on Feb. 14. This bill if passed would impose a Global Tax on the US and take $845 BILLION over 13 years away from the needy children in the US and place the money under the dictates of the UN. Oprah, one of Sen. Obamas chief supporters, has also discovered that it is not worth helping educate the poor in the US. It was better to take her millions overseas and set up an exclusive palatial girls school in Africa. Unfortunately, she was unable to protect the students from abuse at the hands of her employees. In the last 4+ decades TRILLIONS have been confiscated from American workers creating a cycle of dependency in the guise of wiping out poverty in the US. Every election cycle we hear the empty platitudes and the inflaming class warfare language of the politicians promising everything on someone elses dime. Now we are threatened with initiatives to funnel our tax dollars to a corrupt UN. I think it is past time to end this made up, never ending War on Poverty with its PC mentality and instead resurrect the American Spirit before we no longer recognize the place that the Greatest generation fought to preserve. Lee Jenkins is a staff writer for the Tinytown Gazette Posted by: no mo uro 2008-02-21 |
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