EDITORS NOTE: This is the third of a series of articles on the Fiscal Cliff crisis facing Louisiana today.
Last week we discussed the fact that Medicaid is bankrupting America and Louisiana both financially and morally as our government is paying people to not work and to have baby’s out of wed-lock. Today we will look at the history of the Great Society welfare programs, which includes Medicaid, and will show that they have decimated the disadvantaged family unit — and that our political leaders knew that this Medicaid “Trojan Horse” could cause much harm to the Black community.
In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson implemented the “War on Poverty” with his social experiment called the “Great Society Programs”, and said ;
— “it will take fifty years to see if this experiment works”, and
— “if they pass this, those ________ will vote Democrat for the next one hundred years.”
So what was the “Great Society “experiment? Was it programs to fight poverty, or programs to use taxpayer dollars to buy votes?
It is important to note that President Johnson was warned in a 1965 report by Daniel Patrick Moynihan (“The Moynihan Report”) that the Great Society programs could not produce equal opportunity for Negroes as promised unless the stability of the Negro Family improved, and that –
— “The family structure of lower class Negroes is highly unstable, and in many urban centers is approaching complete breakdown; this is the fundamental source of the weakness of the negro community”;
— “From 1949 to 1963 black “illegitimacy” (out-of-wedlock pregnancy) has jumped from 17% to24%” (Note: today black illegitimacy is at 73%);
— “As a consequence of these trends there has been a startling increase in welfare dependency.”
Moynihan speculated that something deeper than economic hardship alone was beginning to damage lower-class black families, which were falling apart. He offered significant data showing that black poverty, unemployment, welfare dependency, and serious educational disadvantages were all interrelated — and called for federal programs that instead enhanced the stability of the Negro American family. No doubt Mr. Moynihan was also well aware of the fact that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had been adamant that work requirements had to be part of his “New Deal Programs” in the 1930s in order to prevent social and moral decay of the American citizenry.
Well, here we are exactly fifty years into the experiment, and what do African-American’s see?
— Star Parker, an African-American author and President of CURE, has two recent articles entitled “The Cost of Medicaid: Compassion gone Astray” and “Liberal Values are Bankrupting the U.S.” in which she points out a recent Gallup poll which showed that 70 percent of Americans now think unmarried sex, having baby’s out of wed-lock, and divorce are ok. Hence, the institution of marriage is crumbling – but liberals think this is good because “doesn’t the removal of “thou shalt not’s” liberate us?”
— Thomas Sowell, famous African-American economist, professor and syndicated columnist, stated in recent articles that “a vastly expanded welfare state in the 1960s destroyed the black family — in 1960 only 22 percent of black children were raised by one parent, but by 1985 67 percent of black children were raised with either one parent or no parent — kids from homes where they were not given behavioral standards are on a path that can lead them straight into prison or worse - - there is a political vision promoted by Washington politicians that blacks are besieged by racist enemies, from which politicians are their only protections — and this is a de facto declaration of moral bankruptcy — as long as millions of Americans vote on the basis of who gives them free stuff, look for their freedom to be eroded away, bit by bit.”
We also see complete social chaos in the black communities of Ferguson, Baltimore, Dallas, New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Asked recently about the increase in violent crime, New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton said “We have a very large population of many young black people who have grown up in an environment in which the traditional norms and values are not there - - the Moynihan 1965 Report warning that the disintegration of the black family could lead to other social ills was right on the money.” So fifty years later poverty has not budged, yet we see a strong African-American vote for Democrats. So did the Great Society experiment work as intended?
Steve Gardes is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and Certified Valuation Analyst (CVA) with over 40 years of public accounting experience.