Kids In Crisis

[Rick Rowlands]

Thank you WhyTown.  I'm sure Dennis still doesn't see the difference.

[Why?Town]

Big difference.

People giving because they decide they want to is NOT the same as the government giving what it has taken from these same people.

[irishbobcat]

But you take handouts from people......same difference....

[Rick Rowlands]

I've never accepted government money at the Tod Engine Heritage Park and never will. 

[irishbobcat]

Ah, Rick Rowlands.....another warm, compassionate neo-con right winger who would let poor

people starve instead of getting a handout......

Funny, Rick Rowlands does not want poor people to get a handout, yet Rick will take any handout

to help fund and build his junk yard steel historical park.....

[Rick Rowlands]

BTW, LET THEM STARVE! Then and only then will they find a way to serve their fellow person in such a way that they will receive what they need to eat.  Used to be SOP in this country.  Get a job, do the job well, and pay your own way.  We need to come back to that.

[Rick Rowlands]

What is this "giving money to big business" crap?  Business doesn't have money given to them, they earn it by providing a service or a product wanted by the consumer.  Besides, what does any of it have to do with children in poverty?

Once again I have to bring up the point that we should be coming down hard on the parents who have children with no means of supporting the children. Having a child is not a requirement, it is a choice, and so many people in this country make such poor choices.

[Dan Moadus]

As usual, Dennis doesn't offer any counter argument, just insults.  Just another exhibit of the left's intellectual bankruptcy.

[irishbobcat]

So Dan, giving money to big business is a better solution?

Glad to see you didn't win your election to Congress.....You would cut every

social program in site to starve people.....and children......

Keep showing us how you are such a warm, caring, compassionate conservative, Dan....

[Dan Moadus]

Articles like this just don't play any more in America, except with socialists and communists.  Evidence abounds that socialistic policies advocated by people like Dennis have caused this problem. The root of these problems is the destruction of the family which can be directly linked to the leftist Democrats. They have created the dependency class that rewards the fathers absence.  We have spent trillions of dollars on liberal schemes since the 60's to no avail. There are probably more poor today as a result. 

As is typical, liberals focus on the immediate problem while ignoring the secondary effects of their actions. Giving money to poor people only invites them to stay poor, and giving them more money if the father disappears only compounds the misery.

As cruel as it may sound, doing nothing for these people would have had better results. If being a single mother living on your own results in having more money, what do you think young women will do? But, if being a single mother living alone resulted in starvation, what do you think they would do? Probably, they would stay with their families, and maybe even insist that the father of their children stay with them.

"But there aren't the jobs needed to support these people." you say. That's "bull". What they mean is that their aren't jobs that will enable them to sleep to noon and still afford big screen TV's and iPhones. Listen to what Herman Cain relates about his family. His father had to have three menial jobs to support his family. He said that he had three jobs until he could live on two jobs, then he had two jobs until he could live on one job.

People can't find jobs today because they don't have to. If not having a job meant starving you would see how people pull together to help each other.  The problem today is that the poor used to turn to their families first for help, then to their churches, and lastly, to the government. Today, they turn to the government first.

[irishbobcat]

What will the Neo-Con GOP do to help solve this problem?

Probably give more money to big business and create more tax loopholes for the rich.....

This would please Dan Moadus....


By  Rita Price
The Columbus Dispatch Thursday October 6, 2011 5:30 AM

As many black children slide deeper into poverty, dysfunction and despair — nearly 46 percent of those younger than 5 are now poor — child-welfare advocates question whether the nation has gone numb to the problems.

"How is it that ordinary people of faith are not up in arms?" asked Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Washington-based Children's Defense Fund.

"Something's come loose," she said. "We are normalizing poverty."

Edelman, one of the nation's foremost voices for the disadvantaged, was in Columbus yesterday to brief a handful of invited civic, school and church leaders on the Defense Fund's Black Community Crusade for Children, a research-based push to draw attention to the plight of black children.

The recession has only made matters worse. "The child is not to blame," Edelman said in an interview before the meetings.

The Defense Fund's recent report on child inequality says U.S. census data show black children are three times as likely as white children to be poor and four times as likely to live in extreme poverty.

In the city of Columbus, black children younger than 6 are the poorest group, with 54 percent living in poverty in 2010. That's twice the percentage of young white children in city households at or below the poverty line, defined as about $22,300 a year for a family of four.

Extreme poverty is half that, or about $11,160, and about 20 percent of Columbus children younger than 6 — of all races — live in households at that income level.

"It is staggering, just staggering," said Adrienne Corbett, executive director of the Homeless Families Foundation, where more than half of the families served are black.

She said the challenges often seem overwhelming. "I think the problem, in some respects, is that people don't know where to start."

Poverty's attendant issues are legion: out-of-wedlock births, underachievement in school, poorer health, high rates of unemployment and incarceration and crime victimization.

Edelman said there aren't enough community members — including the poor themselves — fighting for change. The Defense Fund is working to train a new generation of young people to take up causes, bringing many of them together at the organization's CDF-Haley Farm near Knoxville, Tenn.

The leadership void is there to be filled, she said.

"Tell me five leaders in America today," Edelman said. "Any color. Who do you listen to in Congress? Where are our moral voices? Where are the corporate leaders who will say it's not about us, it's about the country?

"I think the very notion of America is on the line."

Jobs, decent wages and education are the obvious needs, she said. Young people, for example, are less likely to become parents too soon if they envision bright futures.

"I always said hope is the best contraceptive," Edelman said. "If people have a sense of what their lives will be at 21, they won't want to be mothers at 17."

Maria Goss, Head Start director at the Columbus Urban League, often wonders about the future of her preschoolers.

"Where are the adults rallying around these children?" said Goss, who attended Edelman's program. "The adults have to stand up, too, but sometimes they're so beaten down."

Communities can't afford to throw up their hands, said Ellen Moss Williams, executive director at the Godman Guild, a settlement house in the Weinland Park area.

"I like to ask people around here, 'What part of the elephant are we going to eat today? It's big, but small bites matter.' "

Edelman praises such efforts. But she still worries that the nation is on the verge of losing much of the civil-rights progress amassed over the past

60 years.

"It's a very dangerous time," she said. "And this is a time for real debate."

Dispatch reporter Bill Bush contributed to this story.

rprice@dispatch.com