THE PROGRAM TO ELIMINATE POVERTY:

FROM THE NATIONAL WELFARE RIGHTS UNION.

At a recent retreat/conference of the NWRU, the following eight position points were drafted and unanimously voted upon. We respectfully submit them to the Presidential Candidates as the foundation on which to start dismantling poverty in the U.S. The National Welfare Rights Union also believes that “8 is enough.”

Well, what is one to make of such an opening statement? The folks at NWRU had themselves a retreat and conference. Their website is mum on the subject of where the retreat was held and who attended, but I suppose we can be certain that the location was probably not Lake Tahoe, Aspen or the Trump Tower in Manhattan. Likewise, the affair was probably not held atop a steam grate in Duluth or a squatter’s loft in Hell’s Kitchen. NWRU’s coyness on the subject allows me to roam freely among many offensive alternatives.

This retreat/conference managed to accomplish something I have never personally observed emerging from any group of more than six people not wearing clerical collars – unanimous agreement on eight points. I must, therefore, conclude that the “retreat and conference” was held in someone’s kitchen, the delegates being seated at a dinette set, and attended by people who all knew one another intimately and were of such like minds that a proposal to invade Mars would have also achieved unanimous approbation.

Before flaying the details, I would also like to know how and when poverty was invented and pieced together, since the eight points are a “foundation” for “dismantling” poverty. An odd locution, that; twenty plus years in the construction industry and I have never needed a foundation for taking something apart.

Here are the points upon which all three “delegates” concurred (remember, I am free to construct the meeting in any way I desire until the NWRU comes clean):

1. All residents of the U.S. will be eligible for a guaranteed annual income to protect them from falling below the poverty level.

My Balderdash Detector informs me that, since the “poverty level” in the United States is an average that rises or falls according to some sort of arithmetical formula derived at by calculating the income of all households, it is, therefore, metaphysically impossible to impress any amount of moolah on any number of “residents” without affecting said average. In the case of the NWRU proposal, the poverty level can only rise, which requires that ever-increasing amounts of shekels are required in order for all residents to somehow emerge above the average, which will increase the requirement, demanding more money, ad infinitum. There is no “average” capable of including everyone. Goal # 1 of the NWRU is existentially impossible.

2. All residents will be eligible for a single-payee health care system funded by the federal government. We oppose private insurance that profits off of the medical conditions of low-income, uninsured people.

The intellectual slovenliness of the three folks who penned this nonsense is vividly apparent in the above. How, pray tell, do private insurance companies profit from the medical conditions of the uninsured? It is, as Rachel says, a quandary. Okay, the NWRU realizes that if it’s going to put a lip-lock on a particular wallet, the government’s is fatter even than that of the pukes who own insurance companies. I always get a chuckle when I see the term “single-payee” system because, in fact, there is no such thing. The “single-payee” is “all of us”

By the way, you may not have noticed the use of the phrase “all residents” in the above demands. It does not mean “all citizens”; it means anyone whose carcass is within the geographical boundaries of the United States of America at any such time as the NWRU program goes into effect and is simultaneously able to fog a mirror. To grossly belabor the obvious, the NWRU has ever cast a covetous eye toward illegal aliens (oops! “undocumented workers”) and whatever electoral prestidigitation they might conjure up. Granting residents the same rights as citizens is akin to allowing your college buddies to not only crash at your pad forever, it also permits them to renegotiate your lease, take the good bedroom and pick which television channel to watch.

3. All children should be eligible for free, quality child care. We also support a living wage for child care providers.

The NWRU trio goofed here. They want all our little babes to wallow in Gatesian splendor without anyone, at any time, under any circumstances, for any reason to actually part with a penny of their own dough. That’s what “free, quality” means. But one of the three examined the first sentence and pointed out that caring for our wee tads has historically been a low-paid occupation for the ample reason that many people are able to do it, but only those with no alternatives choose to do so. Therefore, to add sinew to the skeletal first sentence, he/she said, let us pay these good folks, say … $50,000 per year (once again, the NWRU’s refusal to be pinned down to an actual number permits me to make up one of my own) to endure the unendurable; that is, a roomful of squalling young-un’s for eight-or-so hours per day. Recently-displaced mid-level health insurance executives would, no doubt, jump at the opportunity and its accompanying bucks.

4. All residents will be entitled to education from birth to death. The Headstart Program must be preserved, funding must be increased, and eligibility should be expanded.

What a great idea! Madonna and Brad Pitt can put their recently-adopted children into swell Headstart programs instead of exclusive Beverly Hills private schools. Of course, both families could place their progeny in public schools under current regulations, but, oddly, have opted not to do so. Hmmm. The cause probably lies in the availability of the aforementioned palaces of privilege for the wealthy so, to put teeth into the NWRU proposal, these toney nests for the elect should be shut down posthaste! After all, Headstart will ever be a last-resort option so long as it remains only an option. If we remove all the other options, Headstart will finally achieve its due prominence and lavish funding will surely follow. Note, again, that this restricted “option” will be available to all “residents”.

I can’t speak about other states, but here in Georgia the participants in our state’s lottery scam provide the “to death” provision without any assistance from the NWRU. Any citizen (not “resident”) over the age of 26 can waltz into any institution of higher learning within spitting distance and attend undergraduate classes for free. I’m fairly certain that few of them aim for a career in diaper-changing, bottle-heating and sandbox dynamics, but that $50,000 per annum salary might prove to be a powerful inducement. Except that providing child-care workers with incomes comparable to what we now pay experienced civil engineers, could create a situation where people who should be designing and building waste-water treatment plants might, instead, decide to provide the inputs thereto. The free market has a nasty way of doing things like that when bureaucrats and vaporous-rights advocates hold sway. Once this becomes apparent, the folks at the NWRU will respond by ridding the nursery schools of such tinkers by paying them $300,000 per year to go back into the sewers where their talents are more needed. Unfortunately, local governments, in order to pay these increased salaries, will be forced to impose taxes on the number of coathangers in the closets of residents, including day-care moguls and sewer sachems.

5. All utilities including electricity, natural gas, heating fuels, water, alternative energy, and communications should be properties of the public domain and not subject to privatization. All forms of communication, such as telephones and Internet access should be included.

Yet again the government is to be saddled with the responsibility for providing things to people regardless of how faithful a steward of the public’s monies those people are. Do I get enough “heating fuels” from the “public domain” in February to romp bare-assed in my abode in Fargo? Will someone in California’s central valley be compelled to erect a windmill so that the electricity thus provided will allow me to crank down my thermostat to 40 in Palm Springs and preserve beef hindquarters in my rec room? If not, who is going to catch me in my profligacy and how will they be paid? The NWRU talks blithely about free access to communications such as telephones and Internet access. Pshaw!! I want I-pods, PDA’s, WiFi, Wii, stereo headphones, GPS, Blu-Ray machines, a 55” digital television and 360 channels of television including all the naughty ones. Deny Me? I think not! I am a “resident” of the United States of America and I want my Playboy Channel!!

6. Everyone has a right to a home. It is the duty of the government to provide affordable housing for all residents, and provide periodic maintenance and upgrades. We recommend a permanent moratorium on the demolition of public housing.

Well, I suppose that if I have a “right” to welfare, it only takes a leap of seven or eight places to provide me with a “right” to a home. I’d like a nice little place in downtown San Diego with about 400 acres around me that I can use to display public art projects like ice sculptures of famous Albanian playwrights. Surely, somewhere in the list of “rights” to which I am heir, there includes a “right” to government-supported artistic endeavors to which the general public is granted free admission once they get past the electrified fences and starving, rabid rottweillers. And if the government has a duty to periodically maintain and upgrade the joint, I’d like it to “maintain” the pool so that I don’t have to go out there every day in the heat just to check the chlorine level. It would also be nice if they could relieve me of the drudgery of snagging leaves, bugs and other detritus from the surface, but that is probably asking too much. After all, where is one to draw the line between a legitimate right, such as home and pool maintenance, from initiative-stifling net-wrangling? As a productive member of society, I suppose that this is one chore I ought to handle myself (or else make it a requirement of habitation for my children)

And while they’re “maintaining and upgrading”, how about doing something to “upgrade” my digs by clearing out the riff-raff who live next door (I can see them through my 50X telescope and I recently saw them wearing white shoes after last Labor Day). Why should I, as an “Everyone”, have to endure such a spectacle?

As to the glamour of public housing and the need to retain it, I fully support the NWRU in this matter. Just because I have chosen a 400-acre urban spread does not compel others to do so. By all means, let us retain public housing; if we continue to demolish high-rise public housing, from whence will the next generation of popular music artistes emerge? High culture and art have ever been birthed in low circumstances. The government has an obligation to retain these crime-ridden abodes for the purpose of nurturing the next generation of those who contribute to the higher arts by spending their formative years in … well, not poverty, exactly since that is no longer to be permitted … but at least straightened circumstances. Those circumstances may seem harsh to those who have to actually endure them, but as a breeding ground for future rap and country music impresarios, they have no equal.

7. All forms of mass, rapid transit should be fully accessible (including to those with physical disabilities,) and affordable to all residents in communities across the country. Routes must include access to major transportation hubs with connecting routes in small and large communities.

This is key! I live in Kumquat, Iowa and have just learned (from the government factotum who checks the chemicals in my pool), that the chlorine level is hovering at the questionable point. Furthermore, I have also learned that the tranquilizer darts that allow me to incapacitate the rottweillers long enough for me to make a run for the front gate are also in need of replenishing. Given that the government is run by bloated plutocrats who care not a whit for the sanctity of my childrens’ aquatic well-being, I must get to Rapid City by the time the pool supply and drug emporiums commence business and return to my hovel before my offspring return from the ministrations of highly-paid professionals at Headstart and not be ravaged by sober dogs. High-speed rapid transit allows me to do so. Engineers run the train, conductors clear the tracks ahead and an attentive porter insures that my glass of bubbly is always maintained close to the rim. No doubt they, too, have benefited from the new anti-poverty programs – their whelps are being educated by former civil engineers, their pools are pristine thanks to government programs – one wonders why they bother to drive trains, clear tracks or pour wine. Certainly I don’t demean myself with such trivialities.

8. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars have depleted the American economy with no end in sight. Poor people have disproportionately suffered from the last eight years of these costly deployments physically, emotionally, and financially.
THE NEXT EIGHT YEARS SHOULD FOCUS ON METHODS OF PEACE AND FUNDS SHOULD BE REDIRECTED TOWARD THE ELIMINATION OF POVERTY.

Well, this is just nonsense! As a resident of the United States I enjoy a lifestyle that prohibits me or mine from enduring the rigors of combat. Surely we have outsourced all that unpleasantness to hirelings in India, China and other backwaters. I mean, after all, you’d have to be a damn fool to actually work in the new America. Wogs do all the work! And, speaking of wogs, perhaps we promised the Afghanis that we would not forget them after the Taliban had been eliminated, and perhaps we freed the Iraqis from an unspeakable dictatorship and struggled to help them establish a civil society in the aftermath – who cares? Are they going to educate my children, clean my pool, pour my champagne or speed me to distant places?

To condemn the NWRU program as “socialistic” is a slur on socialism. Nevertheless, as good, socialist heel-clickers, they promote the demise of all private endeavors and wish to cover the land in a goo of government “benefits”.

To the denizens of the left, government is a magical device. It has the ability to provide things like cradle-to-grave education, housing, utilities, health care, transportation and world peace. It can work these miracles because it has an enchanted money tree planted somewhere – perhaps Camp David – from which it can shake greenbacks on a whim. But these are not just ordinary dollars. These dollars can transmogfify themselves into an endless stream of “free” material benefits without anyone being required to produce or provide them.
For the benefits are all material, and the NWRU has nothing to say about where they are to be found or created – they seem to believe that a sawbuck is the same thing as two pounds of ground round. They bring to mind the arguments of pacifists, who wax eloquently on the variety and availability of alternatives to violence, yet name not a one that would beguile any rational person over the age of six.

There is no need to confront this nonsense on the elevated plains of philosophy when ideas of this kind are more easily butchered in the canyons of life’s experiences. For those below the age of twelve, I shall spell it out in annoying detail:

1. The earth does not yield up its riches upon demand. If I want cornbread for my dinner, some sentient being must endure labor to make it possible.

2. The provider of my cornmeal is not a complete idiot and he will demand some recompense for his toil if, for no other reason, that he may survive another day.

3. If I do nothing more than hand him green pieces of paper, he will withhold the fruits of his labor for reasons spelled out in point # 2 above.

4. Unless I seize his cornmeal by force, I will starve and die.

The “government as piñata” economic model has never brought anything but want, need and suffering to human beings. There is no case in human history to suggest otherwise. If the rational processes of the NWRU seem to be flabby and imprecise it is because they are intended to be so. Given that logic and precision only undermine their blather, what other course is open to them?