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Return to Welfare; History, Results and Reform

Note: If you haven't seen these Charts (showing some of the effects of Welfare on African Americans), you should look at them before reading this. 

African American Politics and Welfare

<SNIP>

    What about other black leaders in and out of Congress? There must have been a curious alliance of African Americans, who traditionally vote 90% Democratic, and Republicans over the issue of Welfare Reform? Surely no African American leader would echo the Democrat party line against progress for their own people and constituents? African American leaders must have experienced the scourge of Welfare firsthand in their districts and be absolutely livid at the poverty and family dissolution that accompanied Welfare dependency? 

    Sadly, the exact opposite occurred. Mainstream African American leaders fought in favor of the continued subjugation of their own people. Again, this is how dangerous some of the ideas of liberalism are. It can brainwash even the leaders of the very people who have had welfare stomped on them for over 60 years, to the point where even their caring, educated standard bearers don't believe in the strength and competence of their own people. These African American leaders believed that poorer African Americans needed government help to fight their way out of poverty - that they would be unable to do it themselves. Caught up in their condescending compassion, they could not bring themselves to believe that the very help that they fought to bring their constituents, was the hopelessness and despair they sought to alleviate. 

    On July 1996 Democratic Representative Charlie Rangel whose district encompasses Harlem, NY said:

Any way that you look at this under the Senate bill originally it was 2 million people, 2 million kids that were pushed into poverty. Now under all the statistical data, it’ll be 1 million children that will be pushed into poverty and an unknown number of legal people that played by the rules, that came to this country, that will just wash off, and why not? They can’t vote. (172)

I think that our spiritual leaders would see how cruelly the lesser among us have been treated that when they get together, of course, after the election, that we could erase the whole thing. (172)

    On March 21, 2005 Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) took to the House floor against the Contract with America and paraphrased a famous statement used against the Nazis during World War II:

Congressman John Lewis, D-Ga., said that the bill would "put one million more children into poverty." He declared, "They're [The Republicans] coming for the children. They're coming for the poor. They're coming for the sick, the elderly, and the disabled." (173), (174)

    The NAACP, (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) lobbied against Welfare Reform. Despite the name of the organization, the NAACP opposed the advancement of colored people:

    As a lobbyist for the NAACP explained, "We saw this as a throwback to the issue of states’ rights, and our history tells us enough about that. It’s negative and frightening." An attorney for the Center for Law and Social Policy, a liberal think tank, explained, "The states have no obligations to the poor under the program. The governors settled for more federal funds and fewer state responsibilities." (108)

    'Civil Rights' leader Al Sharpton opposed Welfare Reform, writing:

"I believe the welfare reform bill attacked the poor and demonized them as people who did not want to work . . . . I marched in 1996 at the Democratic Convention in Chicago over the welfare reform bill because I felt Clinton's policy was unfair." (Rev. Al Sharpton,Al On America, p. 17, 2002) (175)

    Sharpton's mentor, the Reverend Jesses Jackson, runs an organization that threatens and intimidates wealthy corporations with threats of racial lawsuits. These corporations then agree to do business with black owned businesses, which then contribute large sums to Jackson's 'Rainbow Push Coalition'. Sometimes the corporations save themselves this trouble by just contributing directly to Jackson's 'Rainbow Push Coalition'. While head of his organization, Jackson fathered an illegitimate child with his secretary. At a United We Stand America Conference in 1995 Jackson said:

Let us focus on welfare and Aid to Families with Dependent Children. Let us stop AFDC because it costs $17 billion a year. But what about the other AFDC-Aid for Dependent Corporations-the $230 billion that is spent on them? It is easy to pick on vulnerable women and children, but what about the corporations? Corporate welfare exceeds the support given to poor mothers many times over because poor mothers do not make campaign contributions and do not even vote because their spirits are broken. (176)

        He continued:

Contrary to media stereotypes, most poor people are not on welfare. They are mostly children. They work the hardest and the longest on the nastiest jobs. They cut up our chicken. They sweep our streets.

They are not lazy; they raise other people’s children. They work in the hospitals, they mop the floors, and they change the beds. They empty our bedpans, and yet when they get sick, they cannot afford to lie in the bed they make up every day.

Why are they in this trap? Their wages have been falling every year for over 20 years. Their conditions grow worse. Their neighborhoods are terrorized by crime. Their young cannot find work. Those who escape face extra obstacles to find loans to buy a home. 

Washington has abandoned them. You must not. (176)

    Jackson was so energized against the Welfare Reform bill that he teamed up with N.O.W. (National Organization of Women), a feminist group that has long been a proponent of left wing causes. N.O.W sent out this notice on July 15th 1996:

Contact your senators (our focus should be on the Senate, rather than the House, which will easily pass welfare "reform") immediately to tell them that this legislation makes millions of women and children poorer. It dooms families who live in areas with high unemployment to hopeless poverty. It will increase hunger and domestic violence, among many unfortunate consequences. It will negatively impact struggling families with children who have severe disabilities. It incorporates intrusive and dangerous policies which will mean that problems associated with poverty will become worse, not better. (177)

    N.O.W believes that welfare offers women sanctuary from domestic violence. To what extent this might be true I don't know. One might think that stronger families, not weaker families would work best to combat this... 

    Here is a picture of Jesse Jackson marching with N.O.W. members against Welfare Reform, along with the results of the reforms they opposed. Chart 55 (178) (this in reference to the pic):

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    Again, might we think Jesse Jackson and all these other black leaders would apologize to their constituents and the Republicans they maligned and immediately insist on continuing the progress gained from Welfare Reform? You probably already know my tired answer... No, they learned nothing from their initial foolish opposition. It seems the pattern of liberals, Democrats and African American leaders opposing future reform is just as predictable as means-tested government assistance resulting in poverty, family breakup and teen pregnancy. The Black Press US Network reported on May 22nd, 2002 (180):

Jesse Jackson denounces bush's welfare reform agenda

Overall, when the copious burden of finding employment is imposed on a citizen without regard for other obligations, government dependency will be the conclusion. (!?!?!?!?!?!!?!!)

The Rainbow Push coalition is in accord with the children's defense fund in pointing out that the Bush plan hinders citizens moving from welfare to work in many different areas:

The Bush plan would require that more families work more hours. Under the proposal families would be required to engage in a work activity 40 hours per week - a one third increase from the current 30 hour requirement (20 hours for a single parent with young children). In addition the Bush administration would require states put 70 percent of their caseload to work or suffer financial consequences. Currently states have one third of their caseloads in work. (180) (emphasis mine)

    There you see Jesse teaming up with our old friends in the Children's Defense Fund. If you'll excuse me, I have to repost this statement for it's hilariousness as well as the pure idiocy of it: 

Overall, when the copious burden of finding employment is imposed on a citizen without regard for other obligations, government dependency will be the conclusion. (180)

    I..... am speechless.... 

<SNIP>

    Lyndon Johnson, himself a Texan, did a lot to advance the Civil Rights movement as both Senate Majority Leader and President. He also was equally responsible for the oppressing effects that his welfare policies had on the African American people (and all poor people). It is reported that: 

     Johnson didn’t stand for re-election in 1968 and ironically his last public appearance was at a civil rights symposium. When he died a few weeks later, 60% of the people who filed passed his coffin to pay their respects were African Americans. (183)

    How many African American will come to Newt Gingrich's funeral? Gingrich may not have done anything for 'Civil Rights', but what exactly is the definition of 'Civil Rights'? If Civil Rights means the 'Advancement of Colored People' (to steal the phrase from the NAACP), then is white, southern, Republican, Newt Gingrich the leader of the modern African American civil rights movement? If we judge him by his results - Yes! And why should we believe his intentions are any different then those of Reverend Jackson and Georgia Representative John Lewis? How strange then, that this man should have so little support from the African American community. We again have the opportunity to witness the contrast between overt explicit racism - met head on and defeated by Johnson, Jackson and Lewis (a real hero in this) and the subtle implicit racism of the 'bigotry of low expectations' perpetuated by the previous three men and defeated by Gingrich and the Republicans. Should we call it teamwork? I dunno... it doesn't quite fit because Gingrich isn't trying to bring back any of old civil rights laws (and Republicans helped pass them anyway), but Jackson, Sharpton, Lewis, Brown, and the rest of the black leadership, along with liberal Democrats, are trying to overturn, or 'fix', the progress that Gingrich and the Republicans have made.

     Today, some Conservatives, rather understandably, don’t often appreciate the role that the modern 'civil rights' groups still play in combating explicit racism because they see them as the front-runners of leading their people into implicit slavery through welfare programs etc… Far too often these 'civil rights' groups inexcusably play on their peoples' fear of explicit racism to advance their own agenda and brainwash voters [example 2000 Florida and 2004 Ohio recounts]. This is not to say that the African American leaders, the NAACP, and other organizations don't have a legitimate purpose in fighting overt racism where it still exists, but why can't they fight both kinds of racism? Why did (do) they support the slavery of welfare? 

    Initially, they may not have had much choice. During the 50s and 60s a great political upheaval took place across the solidly Democratic South as some Southern Democrats, who since the civil war had led the fight against the civil rights movement and desegregation, grew disgusted with the national Democratic leadership and bolted to the Republican party. Over the years various historical revisionisms have been put forth that label(ed) the Southern Republican party as the new 'party of the racists'. In truth, there were many differences between the Southern Democrats and the new leftward movement of their national party and racist attitudes were fading. Cultural issues, taxes, pacifism, and the growing religious movements all contributed to the slow exodus from the Democratic party. In the 1968 Presidential election it was a segregationist Democrat, George Wallace, who carried the South. In 1976 Jimmy Carter, a liberal Democrat (who ran as a centrist) and a strong civil rights supporter, swept the South.  

     But the fact that some leftover extremist elements entered the folds of the Republican party (where some remain today - like the CCC) was enough to cause African American groups to, understandably, choose the opposite path. Having ancestors abused as slaves and then living through the bitter experiences of discrimination and segregation drove the newfound African American political movement to embrace socialism almost by default. Old style 'moderate' Southern Democrats like George Wallace were more interested in rolling back civil rights gains then tackling the racial problems of the South, and the growing Southern Republican party was also indecisive, attempting to pander to it's many constituencies. The only place African Americans found acceptance and true outrage over the racial conditions in the South was on the far left of the American political spectrum. Early civil rights marches, especially in Washington, were also attended by labor unions. Martin Luther King Jr's SCL (Southern Christian Leadership) civil rights organization received much of it's funding from New England liberals. King was a socialist, and was accused (perhaps often unjustly) of having communist sympathies.

    The simultaneous rise of Islam, and the radical 'Nation of Islam' group among blacks might be attributed to similar factors. Malcom X spoke of his trip to Mecca as a glorious experience where black, white, Asian, rich and poor marched together as equals. 

    Nonetheless, one can only agree that it would be better to live as a socialist then as a slave or second class citizen. Having listened to Martin Luther King Jr's autobiography (250), read Malcom X's autobiography (249), and attended a 2000 Monmouth University speech by Black Panther co-founder Bobby Searle, I can certainly appreciate the effectiveness of King's nonviolent methods in bringing change. As progress against explicit racism advanced through this method, we must then ask at what point does the harm through implicit racism (via welfare) begin to overshadow the good achieved through combating explicit racism? And did the civil rights movement have to be fought this way? How would African Americans be living today if the civil rights movement was fought using King's nonviolence, but with a conservative ideology? Would it have gotten the same support amongst African Americans at the time? The innately deceptive and ultimately destroying promises of (economic) liberalism must surely have found acceptance amongst the poorer black populations and garnered additional support for the civil rights movement. All of these questions are not easily answered. In the end, African Americans did achieve civil rights - but at what a cost! And when will this economic stagnation and family dissolution finally stop? When will an African American leader stand up and shout, "Enough is enough - we are free - now let's take off these chains!"?

    The most amazing thing is that liberal black leaders and organizations, to this day, attack conservative African Americans as "Uncle Toms". Maryland Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele, the highest ranking elected Republican in the country had Oreo cookies thrown at him - black on the outside, white on the inside - during the 2002 gubernatorial campaign (238). Black leaders don't apologize and admit that conservative African Americans were right about Welfare Reform; they attack and demean them. At a recent July 12th 2004 speech, NAACP President Kweisi Mfume's reiterated the same. A San Francisco Gate columnist wrote (184):

Mfume, in his speech to conventioneers, accused "ultra conservative right wing" attackers of hiring black people to carry their message. Think of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell or University of California Regent Ward Connerly [Education Secretary Ron Paige]. 

According to Mfume, these people are "black hustlers and yes men" who "speak with their puppet master's voice. (184)".

     Here are some more excerpts from Mfume's speech (185):

Then when the ultra conservative right wing attacker has run out of attack strategy, he goes and gets someone that looks like you and me to continue the attack.

They've had a collection of black hustlers and yes men on their payrolls for more than twenty years, promoting them as the new generation of black leaders. 

They can't deal with the leaders we choose for ourselves- so they manufacture, promote, and hire new ones. Like the ventriloquist's dummies, they speak in their puppet master's voice, but we can see his lips move and we can hear his money talk. 

They've financed a conservative constellation of make-believe-black organizations, all of them hollow shells with more names on the letterhead than there are people in their membership. They are purchasing seats at the table of influence, and they're buying people for a few bucks a head. Because they know that some of us come cheap... real cheap.

Thirty six years after the assassination of Martin Luther King we still have a society where some in the Democratic party take our votes for granted and many in the Republican party still refuse to campaign for them. (185)

    How can any Black Conservatives campaign for the African American vote when they are labeled them as such?

    Republican pollsters have always marveled at how African American leaders continue to be supported by the black population when they seem to be so out of touch with their base. For example:

In 1992, a national survey found that 9 of 10 Americans believed that the welfare system should be changed. This opinion was held by African-Americans (81 percent) and Caucasians (92 percent), conservatives (92 percent) and liberals (89 percent), and the more affluent (93 percent) as well as the less affluent (87 percent). Republicans and Democrats responded in like fashion (both at 89 percent). (22)

    This caries over to issues other then Welfare Reform, such as education:

Polling on education shows what is going on. A 2001 study done by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies reported that 60 percent of African Americans support education vouchers. However, the same study also reported that 69 percent of black elected officials oppose vouchers. (187)

    And even on such topics like gay marriage, a CBS poll found that 63% of African Americans were opposed to gay marriage (189). Interestingly, gay activist groups joined with black leaders in opposing Welfare Reform.

<SNIP>

    Let's do a review; we have N.O.W, the Children's Defense fund, NGLTF [National Gay and Lesbian Task Force], liberal Democratic Senators, and African American leaders all opposing Welfare Reform. The worst part isn't that they opposed Welfare Reform, it's that they all purport to represent the groups that were most helped by it! We have a group representing women, a group representing children, a group representing African Americans, and a group that 'supposedly' represents all of these - and all are fighting to hurt their constituents as much as possible! If we were to expand the scene to encompass all the political issues of the day, we will find that all these groups support each other in everything they do, regardless of the interests of their members. This is why 'Civil Rights' leader Al Sharpton got slapped down from all angles when he initially supported President Bush's nomination of California Justice Janice Rogers Brown, daughter of a share cropper, to the D.C. District Federal Appeals court. Days later, Sharpton withdrew his endorsement after liberal groups threw a hissy fit. (191) His initial instincts, to laud a successful African American, was right. What better way to advance 'Civil Rights' then to get African American Judges appointed in high positions?  Why did the liberal groups do this? Would they have been so opposed if she hadn't been African American? Or were they so worried because she was an African American and said things like (192):

Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible. [“A Whiter Shade of Pale,” Speech to Federalist Society (April 20. 2000)(“Federalist speech” at 8]

"We no longer find slavery abhorrent. We embrace it. We demand more. Big government is not just the opiate of the masses. It is the opiate. The drug of choice for multinational corporations and single moms; for regulated industries and rugged Midwestern farmers and militant senior citizens." [IFJ speech at 3-4] (192)

    This is precisely the kind of person that would have endorsed, embraced and even fought for Welfare Reform! She would have fought for it because she knew it was in the best interests of her race, the poorest people in America and, indeed, all Americans. She is exactly the kind of person that minorities and the poor need in Washington, yet she was shot down - not by white racists, but by black liberals. This is why conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh coined the NAACP the NAALCP: National Association for the Advancement of Liberal Colored People. It's funny, but true. The NAACP, other African American groups/leaders, and other liberal groups consistently team up and destroy any Black conservative that raises a dissenting voice. Who really is the puppet and who is pulling whose strings? The Democratic party and a small group of liberal black and other minority leaders consider their primary goal, not the advancement and progress of African Americans, minorities, and the poor, but the advancement and progress of liberalism. In their minds the two goals are completely compatible. The idea that they are destroying their own people is alien to their very way of thinking.  

<SNIP>

    We already know the answer from the examples in this paper; from Shannon County South Dakota, to McDowell County West Virginia, to San Joaquin Valley California, to the inner city ghettos across the nation, it doesn't matter if you are Red, White, Brown or Black - your voting for the Democratic ticket that kept you in poverty in the first place! It really defies explanation because the lawmakers they would most agree with, in at least some cases, seem to be Conservative. 

    I will offer my perspective, which I admit had changed since I began my research for this paper. You see, the representatives of these communities all have a few things in common. They all realize there is something wrong with the situation that their people are in. They know that the people they represent are just as good and just as capable and just as intelligent as those in mainstream America. So they know that there is not a level playing field. This is where I am in complete agreement with these leaders. However, at this point we diverge, they - the so-called leaders of their communities - begin laying the blame elsewhere, which differs by each community. They are correct in this. What they know in their hearts is true. The people in their communities are just as capable and normal as any group in mainstream America. Outside forces are to blame for what is taking place. But they lay the blame in the wrong places. The Federal Government's welfare system is to blame for what was happening and this they don't see.  

    Take the African American community. Many African American leaders and Liberal Democrats believe that more blacks are in poverty because of past white racism. This was true in the past, and racism still occasionally rears it's ugly head, but by and large racism is not the main obstacle to the advancement of African Americans. America is a big melting pot of equal opportunity for all people. African American leaders, as they try to cast their blame on mainstream America for past crimes, and grope for reasons to explain the relative lack of success of (some of) their people, become more and more desperate in their search. Some begin to make ridiculous arguments for slave reparations, others campaign for more and more government aid and programs like affirmative action. I think some begin to loose faith in their people. They begin to believe the liberal line that 'cultural issues' are holding their people down, or perhaps it is the unfair police brutality that lock so many young African American men up. I am not necessarily against affirmative action, but let's be clear about the reasons for it. At present, it should be affirmative action from the scourges of excessive welfare dependency, not from racism, discrimination, or any of these other reasons. Affirmative action should, if it's going to be used, be given to those in historically welfare dependent areas, not just African Americans. As we have seen, it is not just an African American problem.  

    Now, why isn't this broadly accepted in these communities? We would, again, think that the poorest communities would be ultra conservative Republican strongholds, recognizing the need to get rid of these crushing attempts to help them. In fact, why don't poorer people just refuse welfare altogether? No one wants to be dependent, so why don't we see no one signing up?  Then the government agencies and the liberal representatives would get to spend all their money on advertisement and overhead (which they spend a great deal on anyway). No, it never works this way. It is almost like a young child and an allowance. The child is going to take as much as you will give him/her, but the more he/she has the less regard he/she has for money and total excess can eventually lead to destructive development of the child. Natural human temptations for handouts are sometimes too much to resist. Why turn away something that is free?

    Life is often a series of ups and downs and during these difficult times, instead of leaning on friends, family, church or local organizations, which really do have an individual's personal well-being utmost in mind, it can be easy to get hooked on a federal agency in far away Washington. If no one uses the agency it doesn't have a purpose to be, so it must find people that need help. Almost like drug pushers offering that first hit and cigarette companies giving away free cigarette packs, welfare agencies will send that first monthly check. As we have seen, the strongest lures are to poor, young, teenage girls.

    Once a large part of a community is on welfare, poverty begins to set in permanently; single mothers proliferate, crime might rise, schools might fail and the middle class begins to move away. At this point, the impoverished are offered two choices. 

    1. If you don't vote for us your health, housing and monthly checks will be taken away. You might starve or become homeless. We will try to increase funding of existing programs to help you escape poverty and create new ones that address specific needs. Republicans are only interested in helping the rich by taking away from the poor. They are also against programs like affirmative action that helps our race (if the community is a minority community) and have a dark past of discrimination. They are the cause of rising inequality and are taking this country down the path of greedy and reckless capitalism. Things will be terrible if you vote for them. We represent the poor.

    2.  If you vote for us, we will try to reform these programs and try to eliminate government dependency. We are for tax cuts and smaller government. We are (somewhat) against affirmative action because we believe that all people are equal. We are the party of Abraham Lincoln. 

    Now, imagine you are a welfare recipient. The Republican message almost reinforces the fear mongering of the Democratic message. The Republicans are going to cut the programs and then use that money for tax cuts. Not only do the Democrats say it, but the Republicans seem to admit it in their message! Left unsaid is that tax cuts stimulate economic growth, which encourages new hires, which can help former welfare recipients work. Since the money spent on welfare is hurting the people getting it, how can anyone be mad if it's cut? But none of these things will cross your mind if you're a welfare recipient. You might recognize the fraud and dependency around you, but at the same time the message of class warfare resonates. You are poor, so you want the help of the party that represents the poor. You might want programs to help your race and favor other specific programs to help the poor (such as promises of health care). You realize you and others are capable people. You know there is a reason why this poverty and destitution exists. And so some of the messages about police brutality and past racism and discrimination strike home.  It is counterintuitive to believe that programs designed to help - hurt - and that the good people who are trying to fix - destroy. Sadly, you might loose confidence in yourself and believe that your 'culture', your 'people', or just you, on an individual level, don't have the innate ability to be successful. You might come to believe you are a failure. It is the emotional appeal and initial 'packaging of ideas', along with resounding messages of fear mongering and class warfare, that completely win the hearts and minds of these desperate communities. One might more accurately call it "Pure Propoganada" - because it is all an outright lie; made even more believable because the people that are telling it believe it themselves. 

<SNIP>

    But there is hope for the future. Conservative thinkers from minority groups are proliferating. In the African American community, leaders like Colin Powell, Condoleezza  Rice, Clarence Thomas and Rod Paige have some support among average African Americans, if not from their liberal leaders. Conservative authors and thinkers such as Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams are read widely. Thomas Sowell said in a recent interview (211):

But there are pockets here and there of people fighting back. Among blacks it is quite clear there are countertrends, though the crazies are still in charge. Someone teaching a high school class recently asked me for writings by black conservative authors so his students could hear both sides. Thirty years ago that would have been an easy question to answer because it would have been Walter Williams and me, but today there are more black conservative writers than I could possibly keep track of.

There are black talk show hosts all across the country, from Armstrong Williams in Washington to Ken Hamblin in Denver to Larry Elder in Los Angeles and all kinds of people in between. And these are typically younger individuals. I don't see many new Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons coming along. In the long run there's a good chance for a turnaround. On the other hand, between now and then, a lot, probably millions, of young blacks will go right down the tubes because of bad ideas promoted by today's black leadership. (211)

    African American author Star Parker wrote a successful book titled "Uncle Sam's Plantation", (conservative) Newsmax reports (212):

Before Parker became a successful writer, she was a burglar, a drug addict, a victim of domestic abuse, and a woman who had undergone four abortions. Now she is popular speaker and writer and promotes CURE, the Coalition for Urban Renewal in Education, which helped her turn her life around.

Today she warns against the dangers of a federal smorgasbord of social programs that enslave the impoverished and create more poverty.

"Slavery still thrives in this country," Parker writes in her book. "But today, the poor are the slaves, and Uncle Sam is the 'massa.'" (212)

    Another Civil rights group, CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) is airing television commercials in North Carolina, home of Democratic Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards in protest of Edwards blocking the nomination of California Justice Janice Rogers Brown. From the Associated Press (213):

CORE is out of step with most civil rights group in supporting Brown - the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Congressional Black Caucus both oppose her, with opponents citing her opposition to affirmative action, among other stances.

But leaders of the more conservative Congress of Racial Equality say Brown is a black role model who deserves a seat on the federal bench, and they're challenging Edwards on his home turf to support her. The ad also names Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, a fellow Senate Judiciary Committee member who has helped lead the fight against Bush judicial nominees.

"Judge Janice Rogers Brown is the daughter of sharecroppers and an American success story," a female announcer says in the ad set to air for about a week starting Wednesday on cable and network news broadcasts in North Carolina.

"Frankly the fact that we're doing this in the heat of a political season when the whole world is watching, is a good thing," said Innis, a registered Republican. "We're not affecting the election, it's John Edwards' timidity and cowardice in dealing with this question, it's the Democrats' filibustering tactics that could affect this campaign. We just want to let black Americans know what is happening within the Democratic Party."

Spokesmen for Edwards and Kennedy defended the senators' opposition to Brown, contending she has voted against civil rights, workers' rights and environmental protections.

"Sen. Edwards feels a strong obligation to lead on issues of civil rights. Supporting Justice Brown would be turning his back on that responsibly, which is something he would never do," said Edwards spokeswoman Kim Rubey. (213)

    Bill Cosby has been getting a lot of (negative) press attention lately for some of his comments that seem to have struck a chord in the black community. The Washington Post reports (214): 

"For me there is a time . . . when we have to turn the mirror around," he said. "Because for me it is almost analgesic to talk about what the white man is doing against us. And it keeps a person frozen in their seat, it keeps you frozen in your hole you're sitting in."

Cosby elaborated on his previous comments in a talk interrupted several times by applause. He castigated some blacks, saying that they cannot simply blame whites for problems such as teen pregnancy and high school dropout rates.

"Bill is saying let's fight the right fight, let's level the playing field," Jackson said. "Drunk people can't do that. Illiterate people can't do that." (214)

    If we didn't know either of them, we might think that Bill Cosby is wrong and that Jesse Jackson is right. The playing field is not level. Even with Welfare Reform, too many African Americans are still relying, on one form or another, on government assistance. The scars of welfare run deep and 8 years is not enough time to wash them away. 

    In reality both are wrong. Jesse Jackson, in trying to 'clarify' what Cosby said, is really just trying to add his own spin on it. "Leveling the playing field", is not referring to getting rid of government programs and continuing Welfare Reform; it is implying more government assistance, or something like affirmative action, is needed to level the playing field. Of course, if Jesse's advice is followed the playing field will become less, not more, level. Conservative news outlets, which have been hailing the comments and many of the African Americans who applauded or heard and agreed with what Cosby said are wrong too. True, it can't hurt for African Americans to look in the mirror and take personal responsibility for some of their problems, but this is just generally helpful in any community. My main point is that African Americans should not "have to turn the mirror around", because the problems they are facing do not come from within. Their problems do come, in part, from the 'white man', although it isn't considered racism. Their problems do come from the Federal government. More accurately, their problems stem directly from the policies and programs of Liberal Democrats. The hard truth is that for the last 60 years Liberal Democrats have taken the place of the Southern farmers and Northern industrialists in keeping the African American subjugated and impoverished, but instead of gaining cheap labor, they gain cheap votes. Even worse, most Liberal Democrats and African American leaders are completely oblivious to this analogy and desperately fight to keep the present system in place. 

    In final conclusion, I hope I have been able to lay out a clear picture of welfare. I admit, when I started this research I had meant to just focus on cash welfare, but it soon became apparent that other forms of welfare were just as injurious. Some may think that I made a questionable leap from welfare programs to any government program to the Conservative agenda. I did not mean to do this either, but it just evolved of itself. Although it was not my intent, I don't apologize for it. The evidence from these findings is just too damming to say, "well the Liberals may have been wrong in this respect, but on most everything else they're right". Subjugating poorer people, Blacks, Whites, Hispanics and Native American to destitution and family dissolution for over 40 years (or longer) is a colossal, almost criminal, act. Spending almost 6 trillion in taxpayer money to finance this horror, and cutting economic growth in the process is an error of such magnitude, one would think this party and their platform would be discarded and stomped on by the American electorate. Yet because of their willing accomplices and sycophants in the press, the emotional, idealistic and compassionate nature of their platform, and the innate inaccessibility of the counterintuitive truths found in Conservative thought, the vast majority of the people of the United States are totally unaware of this hidden tragedy. 

<SNIP>

The Minimum Wage  (Posted 4/17/05)

     An excerpt expanded and added to 'Welfare; History, Results and Reform' (and 'African Americans and Welfare'). Some readers liked my previous health care graphs, so I've included some new charts that detail the results of government hurtfulness resulting from the tyrannical minimum wage laws. 

      The rational for these laws arise from the government's premise that the citizens of this country are too stupid and greedy to know what to pay each other for an hourly wage and so have decided to throw employers in jail if they pay their workers less than the government, in it's infinite wisdom, arbitrarily decides. Some interests groups (unions) make money when their competitors have to raise prices due to their artificially inflated labor costs and so these unions generously donate a portion of their ill-gotten money back to the corrupt politicians who passed the unconstitutional laws. Of course, a minor side effect is that many employers don't find it particularly advantageous to hire people to work for them at inflated costs. Luckily, most people, notably white male professionals, weren't directly effected by this as they tend to make more then minimum wage. However, these laws had a huge effect on poor unskilled people, teenagers, and especially poor unskilled African American teenagers in inner city neighboorhoods, who, already being ravaged by the destructiveness of government inflicted welfare, were even further devastated by these policies. In 1954 the minimum wage laws were changed to apply to all sectors of the economy, not just manufacturing, and were soon drastically raised. Around 1980, when the minimum wage begins to decline, the rate of black unemployment begins to move back towards the rate of white unemployment:

       Yet some 90% of African Americans apparently didn't view the transfer of wealth from their youth to union members as terribly problematic and so continue(d) to vote for Democratic candidates. In fact, the NAACP, National Urban League, and National Council of Negro Women, along with almost every major black political leader, fought to raise the minimum wage in the 1990s.

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