[massadvj]

I can certainly sympathize. But I think some of your scorn is misplaced, because the vast majority of social welfare in this country does not go to the poor. It goes to the rich.

About 87 percent of the wealth in this country is in the hands of folks over 50 years old. More than half (55 percent) is in the hands of people over 65. Yet about two-thirds of the federal budget is spent on social security and Medicare. By comparison, less than 7 percent of the federal budget is used for traditional social welfare.

So while you rightfully lament the ungrateful, lazy bastards who live in government-subsidized housing in the slums of Chicago, you ought to save your real rage for the leisure classes in Sun City, Myrtle Beach and Tampa Bay.

Most of those folks vote Republican, though, so I guess that makes them alright.

[fishbabe]

there was a story in sf chron about three days ago how people in the bay area were getting homes{yes,homes} worth 160,000 and only paying a fraction of the cost...the taxpayer picks up the rest...the story was in lucianne.com and go to their search engine and look up the word condo..the story is there

[apackof2]

if you want a nice house, the way to get it is to drop out of school, have kids out of wedlock, and sit on your behind and eat Cheetos while watching Oprah Winfrey.

Yup, the "Rev.Jesse's" pinions have learned their lessons well

[nutmeg]

.

[GladesGuru]

In much of America, Johnson's "Urban Renewal" became "negro removel". And "ppor anybody else" removal. Poor housing and cheap hotels were leveled - but nothing was built for those who were displaced.

Where before a wino could put in a few hours at day labor and be paid cash sufficient for a flop house, some food, and a bottle of wine (the real incentive), a after "Urban Renewal" they slept on the streets and under bridges.

I once dated a surgical nurse who lived in Miami. She regularly had stories about how 'trolls' (the OR term for those living under the bridges) were kept alive by maggots which debrided the knife wounds.

When flop houses were available, emergency care was far more readily available. Why so? Ever tried to find a phone with which to make a call from under the abutment of a bridge? Remember, we are talking about a "Renewed" area, so even the phone booths are trashed. That is, those that were not removed due to a lack of profitablity due to vandalism.

Moral: Urban Renewal" had major Unintended Consequences. So do most experiments in socialism and/or social engineering.

[Drango]

I'm on travel and don't have my PBS/NPR ping list; but yes, screw PBS

[Intolerant in NJ]

...Although the segment explained the horrors of the high-rise public housing where the family used to live, it did not explain why the housing was horrible...and I'll bet it didn't explain that this original public housing was so trashed by those living there over the years that in many places it has had to be dynamited as not longer habitable, to make way for the new garden apartments - which I'll also bet will be similarly trashed within a few years, eventually to be dynamited to make way for.......

[ETERNAL WARMING]

They can also "afford" medical care, unlike most working Americans. Nice that we pay for that too.

[FreedomPoster]

< *golf clap*>

Very well put.

[scabbage]

ahhh yes...PBS...The station that ran a show last week on 911 that had on it an interview with a journalist (probably from the NY Times) who described 911 as "poetic justice".

"Your either with us or your with the terrorists"....That says it all

[quebecois]

A multicultural empire always degenerates into competing groups attempting to use the government to screw other groups and horde resources for themselves. The better organized groups win out in the contest.

The reason why these welfare families are getting wonderful new homes while elderly taxpayers are living in smaller, older houses is due to the dynamics of our current empire. The blacks are well organized and whites are not. Hence, the system caters to the blacks and extracts resources from other groups for their benefit.

Sadly, the only antidote for this situation is counter-organization by competing tribes to shield themselves from the depredations of the other groups.

This dynamic is the reason why multicultural empires are always unstable and do not last in the long run.

[FourPeas]

PBS: our tax dollars at work.