Ellen Goodman supports the women Bush freed

She needs to talk to Obama instead of blaming Karzai. Their fate is in his hands. And he doesn't give a whoop. A dead woman won't do well in school, Ellen. What's next for the women of Afghanistan?

Clinton's legacy--welfare reform of 1996

The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 was more successful than anyone hoped. Even Democrats acknowledged it while in the next breath noting it didn't end poverty or illegitimacy or hang the moon. The new Obama plan will undo most of what's left of it. The old programs and expenses crept back over the years under new names and acronyms without the stigma of welfare--SCHIP, EITC, TANF expanded child care, more money for school feeding programs. I think even food stamps got a new name.

We "imported" more poor people through the sieve of our borders and broadened the definition of poverty. Too many well paid jobs depend on the poor--poverty will never go away. Although the welfare case loads went down, it's still really tough for a single mom with limited education and few skills to compete economically with two income, college educated married couples. Do the math. It's easy for her children to slip back into "let the government take care of me" mentality ala Henrietta the Homeless in Florida. Even so, my 1996 letter to Ellen Goodman, the columnist, who was extremely negative then about the Act, shows Democrats differed. At that time I was still a Democrat, therefore my criticism of her column is a criticism of the programs I myself had supported and even then viewed as failures. (I supported the PRWORA, however, with reservations about where former welfare recipients would work.)

You may have a point, childhood or children, have indeed become expendable. But wasn't it we, the Democrats, who put that all in place long before the welfare reform? Who is it that first made unborn children less than human--when we undercut (chopped up might be a better term) the weakest and most vulnerable in our society at the rate of a million a year? We made an inconvenient pregnancy a tragedy and labeled it the "right to choose." Did we really think that this concept wouldn't start creeping up the age charts? And remember when we liberals thought the mentally ill and retarded should be out on the streets enjoying all those civil rights the rest of us have and we closed all their safe havens? And what about the tax structure that clobbers families with children and makes it more advantageous for men and women to just live together? And who was it that made it more financially viable for a woman to be married to Uncle Sam than to a man? Who was it that made being totally unproductive an entitlement? Wasn't it you and me?

I'm older than you, Ms. Goodman, and I remember when the "War on Poverty" began. I've seen 30+ years of billions of dollars being thrown at a problem, dollars that often go to pay the salaries of social workers, government bureaucrats and careerist do-gooders just so we can feel like we're doing something. I myself once worked for the JTPA--and I worked very hard, but I fear most of the money didn't really make it to the people who needed the help. Many have left poverty behind and for that I am grateful--but I doubt that public assistance helped as much as their families' assistance, or their churches' assistance, or the tremendous economic growth of the 1980s, the years we Democrats love to lie about. The problem with poverty graph lines and figures is it doesn't show what happens to individuals. Even with the horrors of welfare, my guess is the chances of moving up are still far better in the USA than anywhere else in the world.

Frankly, I'm concerned about where these folks currently on welfare are going to find this "work opportunity." Do I really want someone who has never had a parental example of working for a living serving my food, plumbing my pipes or inserting my IVs? Can you think of any jobs for someone trained in a 6 or 8 week program who dropped out of high school or doesn't have transportation? We all know that initially it will be more expensive to put people to work than to let them live on subsistence.

We encouraged women to get abortions; we encouraged them to go to work leaving the childcare to poor women; we encouraged them to ignore marriage vows. We shouldn't be surprised if the children are "sold and eaten."

And to think I remained a Democrat for another four years! The Democrats are now Socialists and the Republicans are now what the Democrats were in the 1970s and 1980s. Anyone for a new party?

Same old Ellen

I thought for once I might agree with Ellen Goodman when the headline read, "Women need to get over Palinitis." Nope. It really sticks in her craw. She used the entire column to quote all the haters and fear mongers, and then adds her own snarky, snippity, cynical, trash-talking cant to insult and demean not only Palin, but those Republicans and Hillary supporters who plan to vote for her. How does this help her candidate? If you were even considering Obama, but liked the idea of a woman that close to power who didn't get there on daddy's money or hubby's coattails, are you really going to appreciate being insulted by some snooty, back biting, feminasti columnist? Is that how Democrats expand their base? By being base?

Is she kidding?

Ellen Goodman claims the Democrats are suffering from an embarrassment of riches, and the Republicans just an embarrassment.

I know she's a liberal, but blind, deaf and dumb, too? How does this woman survive with so many talented pundits trying to get her job? [She's not in this magazine--I just liked the cover.] The Republican roster, even including the ones I don't care for, like Rudy and McCain (mainly because of their messy personal lives), so far outshine the troika of Hillary, Obama and Johnny there's just no match. Hillary claims "change and experience." She's a has been before she gets to the gate. Who wants to go back to Bill running things and calling it a change? Edwards keeps whining about 2 Americas trying to paddle that canoe in the Great Society swamp, and Obama can't quite get the black folks to believe he's one of them (for very good reason).

Was I this silly when I was a liberal? Don't think so. I probably held my nose when voting for Bill.

4045

Ellen Goodman is just reporting what I said three years ago

There is a dearth of women bloggers who discuss politics, economics, academe, etc. That's one of the reasons I started setting up group links for women in my left hand column. But then women began running away with the stats--gossip, children, decorating, kitchens, memes, book reviews, crafts, religion and so forth. Now about half of all blogs are written by women. They are great blogs, but the men are trampling us when it comes to having any influence in the blogsphere.

The New Republic's Jonathan Chait recently called the netroots "the most significant mass movement in US politics since the rise of the Christian right." In fact, they've amplified the antiwar, anti-Bush views, become an alternative fund-raising operation, and linked cyberliberals across the country. . . Nevertheless, there is another, less flattering way in which broadband has followed broadcast and the liberal political bloggers mimic the conservative talk-show hosts. The chief messengers are overwhelmingly men -- white men, even angry white men. . . Only 7% of the influential blogs are written by women.

Ellen, if you'd been reading me instead of the Daily Kook, you could have sounded this alarm much sooner.

You could have started by reading the writing credits and articles about start-ups in Wired where all things e- appear. WSJ reported in June "all things digital" featuring five movers and shakers. One was a woman--she has a gossip site (actually she's an executive of Time, Inc., but still, gossip?). Brad and Angelina can pull in 17.5 million page views, and I'm betting on the gender of the readers.

The digital network world is about 99% mortared with testosterone, and that includes influential blogs--you must have really stretched it to find 7%. But you probably weren't reading blogs by women, and especially not a conservative blog. And we all started on level ground this time. Women could have written about topics other than "my mean boss," diaper brands, American Idol and shoes, but they write about what they talk about after work and when the kids have gone to bed, and that ain't politics. Some of the "mommy blogs" (are there really 11 million?) have the best writing you'll ever read--great recipes, too--but other than American Daughter, Amy Ridenour, Baldilocks, Neo-Neocon or women who already were writing professionally like Joanne Jacobs, Michelle Malkin and Jane Galt, no candidate will even give them a glance.

Read Ellen Goodman in the Boston Globe leftist to her tippy toes, but right about this--there is no diversity in the progressive/leftist blogosphere.