Johnson's War on Poverty

[lostinblue 1,989]

Oh, How America Has Changed

by Phyllis Schlafly August 19, 2011

Phyllis Schlafly

USA TODAY published one of its colorful front pages last week detailing how America has not only grown dramatically in population over the last two decades, but has radically changed ethnically, geographically, and culturally. The most costly of the many changes is the fact that having children has become increasingly detached from marriage.

Illegitimate births for all Americans have risen from 26 percent in 1990 to 41 percent today "and could be headed higher." Among Hispanics, illegitimacy is 53 percent, among blacks it's 73 percent, and among whites it has risen to a shocking 29 percent.

This extraordinary change is the primary reason that government budgets, both federal and state, are so bloated. Without fathers to provide for these millions of children, their mothers turn to Big Brother Government.

The economist Robert J. Samuelson recently concluded that "the welfare state is winning the budget war." The bipartisan budget deal, which slashed our military budget but kept welfare-state handouts mostly off limits, turned out to be "a triumph of the welfare state over the Pentagon."

Ads are provided by Google and are not

selected or endorsed by Eagle Forum

The Heritage Foundation reports that 77 types of federal means-tested handouts already cost $522 billion per year before Obama took office. He increased this giant amount to $697 billion per year in the first half of his term, and now half of Americans depend for their living expenses in whole or in part on government handouts paid by the other half who pay income taxes.

That was exactly what Obama planned to do when he told Joe the Plumber he wanted to redistribute the wealth and told Chicago's WBEZ-FM that his favorite Supreme Court Chief Justice, Earl Warren, wasn't radical enough because the Warren Court "never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth."

Estimates are that, over the next decade, the federal government will spend $7.5 trillion on means-tested welfare. That's in addition to the nearly $200 billion a year doled out by the states.

In Ronald Reagan's famous caveat, when you subsidize something you get more of it. So the subsidies to women who have no husbands in the house have promoted more and more children growing up without fathers.

The American public has been alerted to the effects of family breakup ever since Daniel Patrick Moynihan's 1965 report called "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action." We can now see clearly that giving cash and benefits to single moms, beginning with Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, destroyed families by making fathers unnecessary and even a barrier to the women receiving free money.

This common-sense analysis was confirmed by British commentator Melanie Phillips, who described the current London riots as the result of "the promotion of lone parenthood" and "the willed removal" of fathers from the family unit by the Welfare State and the "ultra-feminist wreckers" of the traditional family with its male breadwinner. She calls for removing "the incentives to girls and women to have babies outside marriage" and for dismantling "the concept of entitlement" from the Welfare State.

The religious Left has injected itself into the U.S. budget debate by corralling a list of leftwingers to sign a statement called "Circle of Protection" opposing any cuts to welfare-state spending. This group made a political splash running newspaper ads featuring the provocative question, "What would Jesus cut?"

I wouldn't presume to try to read Jesus's mind or announce His political opinions, but I think it's hard to make the case that He would approve subsidizing, and thereby encouraging, illegitimate births. That's exactly what the means-tested welfare handouts have been doing ever since Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty.

Michael Gerson defended the religious Left's Circle of Protection in the Washington Post. He calls the billions of dollars of government spending on poverty "essentially irrelevant to America's long-term debt." I guess we now know why George W. Bush wasn't more conservative: Michael Gerson was his speech writer.

Gerson is wrong. Welfare-state spending is a major cause of our debt, and it is also morally costly because it chases fathers out of the homes. The Heritage Foundation figures don't even count the social and fiscal costs of the drugs, sex, suicide, school dropouts, runaways, and crime that come mostly from female-headed households.

Also, welfare spending is a failure; it doesn't advance us toward any constructive goal, such as helping recipients to get on their feet economically. It merely increases dependence on government handouts and votes for leftwing politicians.

The Obama strategists know their political bread is buttered on the side of creating more and more women dependent on government. Republicans will lose the budget battle unless they face up to the fact that traditional husband-provider marriage is the mainspring of economic solvency, and Republicans will lose elections unless they stop the redistribution of money from taxpayers to dependents on government.

http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2011/aug11/11-08-19.html

[IR5FORMUMSIE 850]

Oh, How America Has Changed

by Phyllis Schlafly August 19, 2011

Phyllis Schlafly

USA TODAY published one of its colorful front pages last week detailing how America has not only grown dramatically in population over the last two decades, but has radically changed ethnically, geographically, and culturally. The most costly of the many changes is the fact that having children has become increasingly detached from marriage.

Illegitimate births for all Americans have risen from 26 percent in 1990 to 41 percent today "and could be headed higher." Among Hispanics, illegitimacy is 53 percent, among blacks it's 73 percent, and among whites it has risen to a shocking 29 percent.

This extraordinary change is the primary reason that government budgets, both federal and state, are so bloated. Without fathers to provide for these millions of children, their mothers turn to Big Brother Government.

The economist Robert J. Samuelson recently concluded that "the welfare state is winning the budget war." The bipartisan budget deal, which slashed our military budget but kept welfare-state handouts mostly off limits, turned out to be "a triumph of the welfare state over the Pentagon."

Ads are provided by Google and are not

selected or endorsed by Eagle Forum

The Heritage Foundation reports that 77 types of federal means-tested handouts already cost $522 billion per year before Obama took office. He increased this giant amount to $697 billion per year in the first half of his term, and now half of Americans depend for their living expenses in whole or in part on government handouts paid by the other half who pay income taxes.

That was exactly what Obama planned to do when he told Joe the Plumber he wanted to redistribute the wealth and told Chicago's WBEZ-FM that his favorite Supreme Court Chief Justice, Earl Warren, wasn't radical enough because the Warren Court "never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth."

Estimates are that, over the next decade, the federal government will spend $7.5 trillion on means-tested welfare. That's in addition to the nearly $200 billion a year doled out by the states.

In Ronald Reagan's famous caveat, when you subsidize something you get more of it. So the subsidies to women who have no husbands in the house have promoted more and more children growing up without fathers.

The American public has been alerted to the effects of family breakup ever since Daniel Patrick Moynihan's 1965 report called "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action." We can now see clearly that giving cash and benefits to single moms, beginning with Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, destroyed families by making fathers unnecessary and even a barrier to the women receiving free money.

This common-sense analysis was confirmed by British commentator Melanie Phillips, who described the current London riots as the result of "the promotion of lone parenthood" and "the willed removal" of fathers from the family unit by the Welfare State and the "ultra-feminist wreckers" of the traditional family with its male breadwinner. She calls for removing "the incentives to girls and women to have babies outside marriage" and for dismantling "the concept of entitlement" from the Welfare State.

The religious Left has injected itself into the U.S. budget debate by corralling a list of leftwingers to sign a statement called "Circle of Protection" opposing any cuts to welfare-state spending. This group made a political splash running newspaper ads featuring the provocative question, "What would Jesus cut?"

I wouldn't presume to try to read Jesus's mind or announce His political opinions, but I think it's hard to make the case that He would approve subsidizing, and thereby encouraging, illegitimate births. That's exactly what the means-tested welfare handouts have been doing ever since Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty.

Michael Gerson defended the religious Left's Circle of Protection in the Washington Post. He calls the billions of dollars of government spending on poverty "essentially irrelevant to America's long-term debt." I guess we now know why George W. Bush wasn't more conservative: Michael Gerson was his speech writer.

Gerson is wrong. Welfare-state spending is a major cause of our debt, and it is also morally costly because it chases fathers out of the homes. The Heritage Foundation figures don't even count the social and fiscal costs of the drugs, sex, suicide, school dropouts, runaways, and crime that come mostly from female-headed households.

Also, welfare spending is a failure; it doesn't advance us toward any constructive goal, such as helping recipients to get on their feet economically. It merely increases dependence on government handouts and votes for leftwing politicians.

The Obama strategists know their political bread is buttered on the side of creating more and more women dependent on government. Republicans will lose the budget battle unless they face up to the fact that traditional husband-provider marriage is the mainspring of economic solvency, and Republicans will lose elections unless they stop the redistribution of money from taxpayers to dependents on government.

http://www.eagleforu...1/11-08-19.html

More right wing claptrap, the Eagle Forum has laid another egg. Before the War on Poverty fathers never walked out on their families? PULEEEEZE!!!! Johnson was a mean SOB but at least he fought against poverty, President Bonzo fought the war against grey hair and common sense. Reagan's caveat? When you susidize greed, you get more of it. I find it humourous that the author describes the illegitimacy rate among whites as shocking, I guess Hispanics and Blacks did that anyways, you know how those people are, but not whites. They never had children out of wedlock, Johnson is responsible for the whole thing. The willed removal of fathers? Johnson was responsible for slavery too, I knew it.

[Danno 1,228]

There aught ta be a law that the families living off the hand of the government be made to send the government a "fathers day card" once a year.

Jist sayin

[Fandango 1,439]

Not for nothing, but I can see the point of this article. Why get married to your baby's daddy if in doing so, you're going to lose your benefits?

[Danno 1,228]

No community has been more effected by all thins than the Black community,

Of all the mahogany mobs attacking people and stores across the country..... how many of those kids have their fathers living at home?

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

It is notable that this was implemented immediately following the Civil Rights Act and immigration reform. It is when black people in this country were replaced by illegal aliens as the exploited class, when we switched from black slaves to brown ones. The black slaves were retired and put on welfare pensions with the predictable and calculated result of complete dependency.

The entire program punishes the family unit and makes it economically feasible to have fatherless families, or at least have the government as the father. The results have been devastating. To think that an entire class of people would still vote for the politicians that did this to them is preposterous. How can someone satnd in one of these fetid cesspools of humanity and say "Vote for me because the other guy wants to take all of this from you!"

I would be ashamed to support or believe in such inhumane and condescending treatment of people. My belief in people's abilty to do for themselves is far too high to believe that.

Johnson gave the blacks equal rights and immediately prepared for their doom by damning them to forever be the dependent class. And if you disagree with this wanton destruction of the ability of an entire race...you are a racist!!!!!

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

Not for nothing, but I can see the point of this article. Why get married to your baby's daddy if in doing so, you're going to lose your benefits?

THAT is the plan.

[scandal 951]

Illegitimate births for all Americans have risen from 26 percent in 1990 to 41 percent today "and could be headed higher." Among Hispanics, illegitimacy is 53 percent, among blacks it's 73 percent, and among whites it has risen to a shocking 29 percent.

This extraordinary change is the primary reason that government budgets, both federal and state, are so bloated. Without fathers to provide for these millions of children, their mothers turn to Big Brother Government.

"Illegitimate" doesn't equate to "Fatherless". Many people are choosing to have children without being married. That doesn't mean a father isn't involved. In fact, the very use of the word "illegitimate" is itself illegitimate. Or ought to be. There's nothing illegitimate about the children involved. It's a pejorative term from an older time that we've correctly abandoned.

Kids without fathers is a serious problem in our society. We ought to address that without the polemics.

[Danno 1,228]

"Illegitimate" doesn't equate to "Fatherless". Many people are choosing to have children without being married. That doesn't mean a father isn't involved. In fact, the very use of the word "illegitimate" is itself illegitimate. Or ought to be. There's nothing illegitimate about the children involved. It's a pejorative term from an older time that we've correctly abandoned.

Kids without fathers is a serious problem in our society. We ought to address that without the polemics.

Yet it seems like when such polemics were in use we had less of the problem.

We have gone from sending a knocked up girl off to her Aunts to letting her have the staring roll in the Christmas play as the Virgin Mary.

[Obama 2012 1,714]

Dismissive ignorance will ignore what the article is saying.

The article is pretty accurate.

The welfare state has systematically destroyed the American family.

I wouldn't necessarily say it was purposeful, but it was naive to think that somehow offering 'free' this and 'free' that to whomever allegedly 'needed' it would be a savior to the poor. It wasn't at all. It destroyed the poor and brought them down even lower. It almost guaranteed them a life of cradle to grave government assistance. Something that's used today to bribe people into voting for certain groups/people. Something that's used to keep people down today rather than to help them rise up.

The problem with the welfare state, isn't welfare. It's the idea that you can never lose it. It's the idea that it's always there.

Want to reform the welfare state? Put limits on it. Extreme limits. You can only buy rice, chicken, and vegetables. No pre-made dinners, no toys, no dvds, nothing except what you might need to survive. You want a home? You're going to live in a 50 story building with everyone else just like you. You'll have heat, you'll have a/c and you'll have a single chair to sit on and a cot to sleep on. You want more? You get yourself down to the work training center, and obtain skills necessary to find a job.

[Danno 1,228]

Dismissive ignorance will ignore what the article is saying.

The article is pretty accurate.

The welfare state has systematically destroyed the American family.

I wouldn't necessarily say it was purposeful, but it was naive to think that somehow offering 'free' this and 'free' that to whomever allegedly 'needed' it would be a savior to the poor. It wasn't at all. It destroyed the poor and brought them down even lower. It almost guaranteed them a life of cradle to grave government assistance. Something that's used today to bribe people into voting for certain groups/people. Something that's used to keep people down today rather than to help them rise up.

The problem with the welfare state, isn't welfare. It's the idea that you can never lose it. It's the idea that it's always there.

Want to reform the welfare state? Put limits on it. Extreme limits. You can only buy rice, chicken, and vegetables. No pre-made dinners, no toys, no dvds, nothing except what you might need to survive. You want a home? You're going to live in a 50 story building with everyone else just like you. You'll have heat, you'll have a/c and you'll have a single chair to sit on and a cot to sleep on. You want more? You get yourself down to the work training center, and obtain skills necessary to find a job.

I think whats clear is, they lack a fundamental understanding of human nature... and I think that is being gracious because even with what we see before our eyes, they continue on in the same vein of "answers".

[one...two...tree 2,762]

More right wing claptrap, the Eagle Forum has laid another egg. Before the War on Poverty fathers never walked out on their families? PULEEEEZE!!!! Johnson was a mean SOB but at least he fought against poverty, President Bonzo fought the war against grey hair and common sense. Reagan's caveat? When you subsidize greed, you get more of it. I find it humourous that the author describes the illegitimacy rate among whites as shocking, I guess Hispanics and Blacks did that anyways, you know how those people are, but not whites. They never had children out of wedlock, Johnson is responsible for the whole thing. The willed removal of fathers? Johnson was responsible for slavery too, I knew it.

Spot on.

[TBoneTX 43,286]

It's been proposed that anyone who receives welfare or salary from the Government be precluded from voting.

[scandal 951]

It's been proposed that anyone who receives welfare or salary from the Government be precluded from voting.

It's a good thing then that we still have a Constitution to protect our basic rights such as voting from such "proposals".

[TBoneTX 43,286]

It's a good thing then that we still have a Constitution to protect our basic rights such as voting from such "proposals".

Granted, but which Founding Father was it who observed (paraphrased) that, "When the people learn that they can vote themselves money, the country's in deep manure"?