{"id":3822,"date":"2017-12-05T04:22:09","date_gmt":"2017-12-05T04:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.westcountydemocrats.org\/?p=3822"},"modified":"2017-12-05T04:22:09","modified_gmt":"2017-12-05T04:22:09","slug":"intentional-discrimination-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/westcountydemocrats.org\/?p=3822","title":{"rendered":"Intentional Discrimination – Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

And infrastructure. But welfare reform, I see it, and I\u2019ve talked to people.<\/em>
\n I know people that work three jobs and they live next to somebody who<\/em>
\n doesn\u2019t work at all. And the person who is not working at all and has no<\/em>
\n intention of working at all is making more money and doing better than<\/em>
\n the person that\u2019s working his or her ass off. And it\u2019s not going to happen.<\/em>
\n Not going to happen.<\/em>
\nPresident Donald Trump, St. Charles Family Arena, November 29, 2017
\n[ www.cnn.com\/TRANSCRIPTS\/1711\/29\/cnr.08.html ]<\/p>\n

A hit country song from the early 1970\u2019s by Guy Drake: Welfare Cadillac \u2026<\/p>\n

I know the place isn\u2019t much but<\/em>
\n I don\u2019t pay no rent<\/em>
\n I get the check the first of every month<\/em>
\n From this federal government<\/em><\/p>\n

Every Wednesday, I get commodities<\/em>
\n Sometimes, four or five sacks<\/em>
\n Pick em up at the welfare office<\/em>
\n Driving that new Cadillac<\/em><\/p>\n

[ http:\/\/www.lyricsfreak.com\/g\/guy+drake\/welfare+cadillac_20847412.html ]<\/p>\n

Back in 1981 one of the first accomplishments of Ronald Reagan\u2019s first term collapsed 77 different targeted benefit programs into nine \u201cblock grants.\u201d The stated reason: to give states the power to better direct anti-poverty money to programs the states felt they needed most. For example, the Community Services Block Grant funded Community Action Agencies, replacing a handful of targeted, federally administered programs. [ https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Community_Services_Block_Grant (sorry, I was in a hurry)]<\/p>\n

Missouri\u2019s Division of Family Services oversaw the distribution of money to this state\u2019s score of CAAs. Or, more accurately, they pretended to supervise.<\/p>\n

I worked at Metroplex, the CAA for St. Louis County, from late 1982 till early 1989. The agency got little money for actually helping families, no, the big bucks \u2013 $20.00 per person per year \u2013 came from registering low-income families. That meant getting the date of birth, Social Security Number, address and some useless info on a three-part form covering every family member which the Head of Household signed.<\/p>\n

Okay, to register more people employees like me were sent to food pantries and other sites to snare poor people. The \u201ccarrot?\u201d Metroplex also controlled the flow of USDA commodities \u2013 which back then got distributed literally by the semi-trailer load.<\/p>\n

Oh, we actually did help many families. I ran pantries in Meacham Park and Valley Park feeding a lot of people. We scrounged money for utility bills. We scored fans and air conditioners. Before Christmas we gave out toys, including, one December, van loads of stuffed animals Famous-Barr traded with the Hudson Company.<\/p>\n

The state didn\u2019t care. That lone DFS supervisor spent most of his infrequent visits verifying the records by measuring the number of files in each cabinet with his trusty ruler.<\/p>\n

Guess what happened?<\/p>\n

In 1988 Metroplex became an early adopter of a networked computer system. The staff got slashed (but us lucky survivors did get raises). And, instead of that three-part carbonless form people were registered using a computer screen. We printed-out their summary and they signed the print-out. Then, well, temp workers spent most summer entering all the data from those old forms into the new system.<\/p>\n

The boss made sure that only one person, a good friend of hers, had what we now call administrator status.<\/p>\n

Amazingly, the few of us left were registering more people than ever before!<\/p>\n

The boss did a lot of other bad things, including having a stove donated for a homeless client installed at her house. Then it got worse.<\/p>\n

A co-worker and I got fired for sending a letter requesting a state audit. Despite extensive coverage by Dennis Riggs (a very good TV reporter) and several front page stories in the Suburban Journals (which used to be a thing) nothing happened.<\/p>\n

You see, the Republican Governor (John Ashcroft) and the Republican auditor (Margaret Kelly) were in on what I call the Soviet scheme: you pretend to work, we pretend to pay you. You can\u2019t have fraud in pretend programs.<\/p>\n

Go back to the creation of the Community Services Block Grant. Yes, the stated reason was to give states more control. The reality was that funding got cut by 25% at first and never again tracked with need or inflation. The Reagan administration didn\u2019t give half a damn about poor people, they just needed a smoke screen.<\/p>\n

Look again at what President Trump said last week in St. Charles \u2013 that old \u201cwelfare Cadillac\u201d myth, that poor people doing nothing live better than good people \u201cworking his or her ass off.\u201d<\/p>\n

What happens next?<\/p>\n

While the media highlights the new trillion to trillion and a half dollars added to the deficit, the fine print in the tax cut scheme and the accompanying budget reconciliation plan requires steep cuts to food stamps, heating assistance, disability payments, unemployment pay, Medicare, Medicaid\u2026you get the idea.<\/p>\n

Essentially, President Trump and the Republicans in Congress decimate programs helping struggling Americans so the very rich can get richer. And, just like 1981, the GOP promises to give more control to the states by block granting basic efforts such as food stamps and Medicaid.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Glenn Koenen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Guess how this ends?<\/p>\n

Of course, as stated by President Trump. the real goal of all these changes is to get more Americans working. I\u2019ll look at that tomorrow in Part 3.<\/p>\n

Submitted by Glenn Koenen, WCD Member<\/em><\/p>\n\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And infrastructure. But welfare reform, I see it, and I\u2019ve talked to people. I know people that work three jobs and they live next to somebody who doesn\u2019t work at all. And the person who is not working at all Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economic-fairness"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7ZWUT-ZE","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/westcountydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/westcountydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/westcountydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westcountydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westcountydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3822"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/westcountydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3822\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3824,"href":"https:\/\/westcountydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3822\/revisions\/3824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/westcountydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westcountydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westcountydemocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}