By W. T. Whitney

There is a whole lot of hypocrisy and wrongheaded views in the establishment treatment of the so-called safety net. You touch on many of them. For me, the basic thing is that there is almost never a discussion of what the needs are or who needs support. Instead it’s all about who pays, and turning potential recipients into victims. Interesting to me that the poverty rate for older people did fall a lot to about nine percent. Poverty for children stays at 20 percent or so, for African Am children 40 – 50 percent, Latinos a little lower. No mention that elders’ needs being met a little is due to their having voices for them , many of which – as you point out, and I did realize this – that those with money wanted government to help them out with their elderly parents and they were heard. Why isn’t there more fight back from Blacks, and Latinos for their children? Don’t know except that African Americans are divided in part due to government manipulation to apply affirmative action to the already fairly well off and thus drew them away from solidarity with working class African Americans.