"If you're wondering why Mayor Mike is suddenly pushing a broader official definition of poverty, here's one guess: He may fear that fewer and fewer New Yorkers these days are actually poor.
And that could mean fewer public-assistance programs. Heaven forfend!
Think about it: Hizzoner wants to jack up the poverty line, boosting the number of people who count as poor in New York by about a fifth, perhaps paving the way for a major expansion of government "antipoverty" initiatives - a la John Lindsay 40 years ago.
Meanwhile, the revolution that began in the Giuliani era - moving hundreds of thousands off welfare and into jobs - shows no sign of letting up.
Gotham's welfare rolls have shriveled to 341,329 cases in the latest figures - the lowest since 1963 and an impressive 26 percent plunge since Mike took office.
And ex-Mayor Rudy Giuliani by then had already pared some 700,000 cases, or about 60 percent, from the rolls."
You're reading that right. Actually, they're being kind, as NYC had one and a half MILLION people on public assistance in its heyday as the single most liberal entity on the planet. For all of Rudy's faults that came to light under the withering eye of a Presidential campaign, there wasn't a quality of life issue that he didn't at least TRY to improve.
"By enforcing standards, targeting fraud and nudging folks toward productive lifestyles, Giuliani & Co. reversed the city's longtime approach to welfare - sending a simple but stern message: Anyone able to work . . . must work.
National welfare reform in '96 reinforced that notion, limiting how long a person could stay on the dole.
Liberals predicted doom. Instead, armies of would-be advantage-takers adapted: They acquired skills, found jobs, even formed families headed by two adults rather than just one."
Ahem. Someone addresses, sort of, the elephant in the room.
"Not only did taxpayers get a break, but those forced off lives of dependency benefited enormously as well.
Indeed, the new approach turned out to be America's most successful social experiment in decades.
Mike, to his great credit, built on Rudy's foundation. He resisted attempts by liberals to water down the rules, shored up ties to employers and held job-training and placement agencies accountable.
Throw in a humming economy and presto - even the supposedly "hard-to-place" folks were dropping off the rolls and into work.
Bloomberg's big-government mind-set seems to be a victim of his own success (and Rudy's) with welfare reform.
Taxpayers should hope his response - simply labeling more people as "poor" - meets a similar fate."
Since no one not having lived in NY really hasn't a clue as to how much of the good fight was, and continues to be waged against the vocal minority of lunatics, here's a simple breakdown. 4 types of people live there. Those who'll take a handout, those who want to keep them that way, those shamed into believing the bullshit that blacks and hispanics truly are inferior, and Conservative Republicans. Since the media as a whole is on the side of all things liberal, the literal millions of Conservatives never stood much of a chance when going against the Clinton-Kennedy plan to make and keep as many beholding slaves as possible.
Politics and social issues can be made to appear incredibly complex, but the simple fact remains that a city the size of NY can expect billions worth of play money when pointing to the huddled masses of poor minorities that just can't seem to make it on their own. It goes something like this; WE made them that way, they can NEVER change, so taking care of them is the least we can do since its all our fault anyway. And the reason why blacks and spanish speaking peoples despise one another?
Both fighting for the same handout.
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