The War on Poverty | National Catholic Reporter

The War on Poverty | National Catholic Reporter by MSW.  MGB: This column was, perhaps, a day early.  Today President Obama announced the first five of the twenty Promize Zones (Jack Kemp meets Michelle Rhee) to aleviate poverty.  He put one in Kentucky, so shutting up Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul.  Of course, I question whether a zone system can work when man to man was approrpiate.

I wonder how much of the success of the war on poverty had to do with ending segregation in the South.  It can't be a small factor.  Fifteen years later Reagan declared that poverty won and went out of his way to diminish governmental tools to end it - while Clinton signed Jessee Helms penultimate attack on black families - mandatory minimum drug sentences.  Perhaps undoing the mass incarceration of black men using clemency powers might be as effective a step as ending segregation - although educating these men and the monthers will have an equally strong effect.

The GOP did add one good tool - the Child Tax Credit - which Clinton and Bush expanded and Obama kept.  It goes part of the way, but it is a weak solution to helping families.  Instead of being $1000 a year per child paid with the refund, it should be $1000 a month per child paid with wages or educational stipends.  THAT will put a dent in poverty.