As if this is a revelation............ The war on poverty has failed. There is a subtle difference between what the Huff reports and the reality of the situation.
What never came were the results LBJ promised when he launched this war: a victory that would "conquer poverty" and "chart an entirely new course of hope for our people."
It hasn't turned out that way in Kentucky. A former elementary-school principal says that even the children in this area find themselves sucked in by the culture of dependency. "Instead of talking about a future of work, or a profession, they talk about getting a check," he says. "That's what they've heard all their lives."
The quotation and the facts and figures all come from an extraordinary dispatch published a few days ago in the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader. In it, John Cheves describes the devastations of 50 years of federal aid on people who've traded one form of impoverishment for another.
"The problem facing Appalachia today isn't Third World poverty," writes Cheves. "It's dependence on government assistance."
Today Appalachia doesn't figure much in the national debate about poverty. Cheves reminds us that wasn't always the case. LBJ chose Tom Fletcher's house to promote his War on Poverty for good reason: The year before, the father of eight had earned only $400 - one-fourteenth of what an average American family earned. In Martin County as a whole, 70 percent of the population lived in poverty.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/28/food-stamp-demographics_n_6771938.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592
What never came were the results LBJ promised when he launched this war: a victory that would "conquer poverty" and "chart an entirely new course of hope for our people."
It hasn't turned out that way in Kentucky. A former elementary-school principal says that even the children in this area find themselves sucked in by the culture of dependency. "Instead of talking about a future of work, or a profession, they talk about getting a check," he says. "That's what they've heard all their lives."
The quotation and the facts and figures all come from an extraordinary dispatch published a few days ago in the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader. In it, John Cheves describes the devastations of 50 years of federal aid on people who've traded one form of impoverishment for another.
"The problem facing Appalachia today isn't Third World poverty," writes Cheves. "It's dependence on government assistance."
Today Appalachia doesn't figure much in the national debate about poverty. Cheves reminds us that wasn't always the case. LBJ chose Tom Fletcher's house to promote his War on Poverty for good reason: The year before, the father of eight had earned only $400 - one-fourteenth of what an average American family earned. In Martin County as a whole, 70 percent of the population lived in poverty.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/28/food-stamp-demographics_n_6771938.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592
