Democrats’ new war

Barack Obama and John Edwards want to get us out of one war and into another. The two Democrats vying for their party’s presidential nomination want to end the war in Iraq and spend at least some of the savings on a new war on poverty.

This week, Edwards finished an eight-state tour reminiscent of Bobby Kennedy’s famous visit to poor Appalachian communities during his bid for the presidency in 1968, while Obama launched his crusade in Anacostia, a District of Columbia neighborhood that has historically been one of Washington’s poorest.

Ending poverty is certainly a noble goal — but from the policy proposals Obama and Edwards offered, it appears neither has a clue about how to go about it. Both men want more government spending, as if adding a few billion more to the $11 trillion that has been spent on poverty programs since President Lyndon Johnson first initiated the War on Poverty in 1964 would finally produce the desired results. Worse, some of the proposals they offered would likely harm poor families, not help them.

Obama wants to tie the minimum wage to the Consumer Price Index, which would price the lowest-skilled workers, especially young blacks, out of the job market, not to mention increase inflationary pressure on wages. Edwards would have the government create 1 million new temporary jobs for the chronically unemployed, despite abundant research that shows these programs have no lasting impact in reducing poverty or increasing long-term employment among the poor.

Poverty among families has remained amazingly constant over the last 40 years. In 2005, the percentage of all families who lived below the government-defined poverty level was 9.9 percent; in 1964, 15 percent of families lived below the poverty line, but the rate dropped to 10 percent by 1968 and has remained at roughly that level, with minor fluctuations, ever since.

In a nation as rich as ours, argue Obama and Edwards, one-in-ten American families living in poverty is simply unacceptable. I agree, but the numbers reveal a lot more complexity than either man is willing to acknowledge.

First, many of those living below poverty today are new immigrants, both legal and illegal. They are newcomers who lack the education and skills to attain a middle class life, at least initially. The poverty rate for non-citizens, 20 percent, is twice the national average, but it has declined substantially since 1993, when it was almost 30 percent; this despite the fact that there are many more immigrants here now, including substantially more illegal aliens.

A government anti-poverty program isn’t the answer for this group — and would be politically impossible given the prevailing sentiments toward immigrants today. But most of these poor families will improve their economic status the longer they are here, especially as they learn English and gain work experience. Studies show that the children of immigrants earn substantially more than their parents, frequently out-performing their co-ethnics who are native-born. And naturalized citizens have a somewhat lower poverty rate than native-born Americans.

Second, neither Obama nor Edwards addresses the issue of family breakdown and its relationship to poverty. The poor are disproportionately made up of women and their children. Poverty rates for families headed by a single white woman with children under 18 were 25.3 percent in 2005; for similarly constituted black families, the rate was a shocking 42 percent. But for married couple families, the comparable rate for whites was just 6.1 percent, and for black families it was only 8.3 percent.

So why aren’t Obama and Edwards talking more about marriage as an antidote to poverty? From all accounts, both men have wonderful, even inspirational, marriages of their own. But many Democrats are worried they might not seem inclusive or might even be viewed as intolerant if they talk up marriage.

It’s a lot easier to offer to increase government spending. My suspicion is, however, that most Americans understand that the War on Poverty won’t be won by throwing their tax dollars behind more failed programs.

Harboring "illegal" aliens

Submitted by DragNet on Fri, 07/20/2007 - 8:31pm.

Isn't this the Linda Chavez who harbored "illegal" aliens servants in his home, that prevented her from becoming Secretary of Labor?

-----------------------------------
Making you think twice......

login to post comments

dragnet: illegals

Submitted by dollaradayandfound on Mon, 07/23/2007 - 7:13am.

This woman was apparently found not guilty of harbouring,
It would have been an odd sense of justice to have put Chavez in jail for this, when there are literally millions of illegals working for companies and individuals in the USA where no taxes are paid for them.
You have likely yourself used them in some fashion to do work for you. They don't look like Germans!

login to post comments

DragNet -- Thinking Twice About Linda Chavez

Submitted by Denise Conner on Mon, 07/23/2007 - 2:24am.

(AP, CNN) In 2001 Linda Chavez said the Guatemalan woman who stayed with her in 1991 and 1992 was battered and in trouble, and that she would give her refuge and money again, "in an instant, without hesitation."

A decade earlier, Chavez had taken into her home severely depressed and abused Marta Mercado, "who had fled Guatemala at a the time of turmoil in that country, who landed in the United States knowing no one and having no friends and having no place to live and no way to support herself."

Chavez gave her money but never, she said, as an employee (household worker). Mercado said she did chores for Chavez, who gave her money on occasion as an act of charity. Some of Chavez's neighbors claimed to have occasionally employed Marta Mercado in their homes.

"While Chavez had told Bush transition officials earlier that she was not aware Mercado was in the United States illegally until after the woman had left her suburban house, she conceded in withdrawing that 'I think I always knew.'"

Mercado said she told Chavez she was an illegal alien while living with her in the early 1990s, though Chavez had said she didn't find out until after Mercado returned to Guatemala.

"She knew I didn't have my green card [at least part of the time]," Mercado (who is now a legal citizen) said and added that Chavez offered once or twice to help her gain legal status.

Chavez, a Catholic, also has helped other immigrants, including two Hispanic women, one with two children, and a Vietnamese man, all of whom said she had helped them when they needed it -- with the English language, their education and job training, adjustment to life in America, employment, and encouragement.

Because of her difficult childhood, Chavez said, "And I vowed to myself that, no matter what happened to me in my life, that I would be there for other people. And I've tried to do that. I have tried to live my life that way, throughout my life. . . . I have tried to do right by people who have been in need."

A subsequent FBI investigation found Chavez, who could have faced up to 10 years of prison and up to $250,000 in fines, not guilty of any wrongdoing.

Chavez, a former Democratic National Committee staffer, was once employed by the second largest teachers' union in the U.S., the American Federation of Teachers.

login to post comments