Why do most of the poor remain poor?

 I think one reason the war on poverty cannot be won is a lot of people who are trying to address the problem see it as a ‘one solution fits all’ problem or that ‘one thing’ cause’s poverty. The one solution and one cause are generally thought to be the lack of money.

My caregiver who is Filipino was being critical of poor Filipinos. He made the statement, “If the poorest of the poor Filipino gets his hands on any extra money he will spend it on a party.”  I told him that problem is not unique to the Philippines. I worked with the poor in the United States for over forty years and witness the same thing over and over again. I would even say that the majority of the poor I worked with would do that. I have had many volunteers working with me on projects become so frustrated they would drop out because of it.

I admit it is foolish for the poor to waste money, but I really do not know if I had lived in extreme poverty month after month, year after year, if I would not want to take advantage of any extra money that came my way to celebrate. 

We know a family that has not had enough money to provide for the basic needs of their family for twenty plus years and recently one of their children got a job at a Call Center. The first thing they want to do is buy a new car. They have never owned a car in their life. To me that is foolish! To them it is about pride and ego it tells family and friends they are overcoming poverty.  They had a party to celebrate the father’s sixtieth birthday at a local café, they paid for the meals and drinks of friends and family, again foolish to me, but not to them. I do not understand their thinking, but they do not understand mine. I was taught to save for a rainy day and when I mentioned that to them they told me, “…every day is a rainy day for them.” Money alone is not a solution to their poverty. The more they have the more they will spend.

Dr. Ben Carson who is running for President in the United States believes that it’s okay to be born poor, but that anyone who stays poor is remaining poor because he or she is lazy. He also says that those poor people are trying to find excuses for their own laziness when they blame their adversities on other causes than themselves, such as the prejudices of others or wrong governmental policies or bad luck. Quite honestly, I have known share-croppers working on the farms of my family members around Alabama that regardless of how hard they work they will remain poor. I see Philippine men, women and children going around my neighborhood looking in trash bins for plastic and metal that they can sell and regardless of how hard they work they will remain poor.  There poverty has nothing to do with being lazy.

Dr. Ben Carson is another example of one solution fits all. He is for a ‘flat tax’ for raising revenue for the government. He believes rich and poor should be taxed alike ten percent (or a random number) on all income. He bases this on the Biblical tithe.  Dr. Carson is not the only U.S. politician for a ‘flat tax’. The ‘flat tax’ idea completely ignores the fact that the poor have more needs than desires and that the rich have more desires than needs. One dollar to the poor has far more meaning than one dollar to the rich. One dollar to the poor could mean a meal. I don’t think assuming or believing God wills wealth and poverty is a viable solution or that religion alone is a solution.

A new report states in 2013 77% of students from wealthy families earned bachelor's degrees by age 24, compared to only 9% of those from poor families. New research shows nearly half of the nation’s recent college graduates work jobs that don’t require a degree.

Is college a solution to end poverty? I think education is only a partial cure for poverty. I definitely do not think a college education by itself is sufficient to end poverty, but I do think programs that combine general education with specific training areas that meet the individual’s needs and the local labor markets needs work toward overcoming poverty. When I was in High School these classes were offered for those not planning to attend college, but the government has eliminated them from the curriculum.    

Of the 30 occupations adding the most jobs to our economy, those requiring the least training make up half of the total.  The low-wage sector of our economy will be the source of most of the job growth over the next decade and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Obama believes college and higher minimum wages are the solution to poverty and is willing to pour more tax dollars into college programs and use any action he can to increase minimum wages, but they are not a viable solution to end poverty. We will not educate our nation out of poverty.

Will government welfare programs eliminate poverty? They will not eliminate anything as they are presently administered. The government has spent $20 trillion on the “War on Poverty” but poverty rates are as high as they were 50 years ago. The present welfare systems are no longer safety nets they are snares that trap people in poverty and dependency.

The welfare system was never created as a single system like Medicare or Social Security. The welfare system is made up of 13 large programs, for instance housing assistance can take the form of public housing, rent vouchers, or tenant support and each administered by different government agencies. The 13 programs generally run independently from one another and are managed by 8 large agencies in Washington that generally don’t interact with one another.

Most of the 13 programs have their own qualification standards. They have separate forms, rules, compliance, audits, etc. Some work in conjunction with state or local programs and some are run completely independently.   

The poorest Americans are often the least able to navigate the complex welfare system. This is why there are so many homeless on the street existing outside the safety net that was built to protect them.  Benefits are not reaching those in extreme poverty and those in the middle class are often getting too much. It all comes down to knowing how to work the system.  Our welfare system is broken; it teaches the wrong values, rewards the wrong choices and hurts those it was meant to help.

The system has many flaws and no one in authority seems interested in correcting them. The welfare system discourages marriage because a loss in benefits can occur when two people marry.  For example a single mom with a minimum wage job could lose all of her benefits if is she marries a man earning $20,000 a year. Often the decision is made by the mom to just live with the man and keep the benefits. She lies on her welfare forms to cover up the fact a man is in the house and when caught, if caught, no legal action is taken.  Today’s welfare system discourages work because at certain income levels benefit loss is greater than additional income earned. Many of the programs penalize welfare recipients fifty cents for every dollar earned. Why would you work if in the end you are going to end up with the same amount you are getting from welfare without working?

There are very few Conditions attached to the welfare system. Conditions should include, work requirements, job training, school attendance and/or grades obtained, drug and alcohol testing or time restrictions on how long you can receive welfare. Without conditions the Welfare System does not encourage recipients to change their lives. Obama argues it is unfair to put conditions on welfare recipients that are not put on the general public – makes no sense to me.

I think Obama’s simplistic solution is just that too simplistic. Obama thinks there are just too many rich people, and they are causing all the poverty problem. So, he proposes, let’s take more money from the successful people and redistribute it to the poor. It is divisive because it fans the flames of envy and resentment. Punishing success will only deter further success and that is not what you want if you want the economy to grow.

The federal government can inefficiently redistribute money; it cannot redistribute success, character, personal satisfaction, dignity, purpose, perseverance or any of the qualities and outcomes that make life worth living. How much the top 1 percent of the population earns has no bearing on whether the bottom 20 percent can move up.

What we need is to reform our welfare system to promote work and individual success, not dependency on government. We need to put conditions on welfare assistance. All welfare assistance needs to be under one government department. We must eliminate marriage penalties in federal programs.  We need to encourage vocational training. We need to help low-income children and parents break free of bad public schools. We need to provide incentives for employers to hire welfare recipients as we do in some States for ex-cons. We need more case workers to eliminate the improper welfare payments, including fraud, that is estimated to be about 9.0% of all federal welfare payments made and totaled $59.6 billion in fiscal year 2014 (Office of Management and Budget General Accounting Office). We need mandatory sentencing for welfare fraud.We need tax reform that is not punitive, especially Corporate Tax reform. We need to stop playing politics and using welfare to buy votes and actually help the poor. 

What do I think of Ted Cruz.

Ted Cruz tries to appear as an uncompromising politician, but he is deal maker just like all other politicians.  His father has said over and over again his son, "Ted will not compromise." But, I think Ted Cruz will compromise on matters that do not matter to him regardless if they matter to others within the party or the Republican voters.

It depends on what audience Cruz is talking to if he is willing to compromise or not. In front of some audiences Cruz has said, "If they offer you half a loaf, you take it - and then come back for more."

Some students who were in college with him complained that Ted didn't have an off switch and that he lectured them all the time. Some claimed he was overbearing.  The Ted Cruz I see today affects me in much the same way as he did his college friends.  I have never felt he was talking to the American people it always seems to me he is lecturing us and prior to Donald Trump he was the most overbearing and smug politicians I had listened to.

Like Obama he knows what he wants and he wants everyone else to want the same thing.  In other words Ted Cruz like Obama thinks he knows what is best for us!  I get the impression if we do not agree with him he believes we must be stupid.

Rob Marks, a fellow student at Princeton, said this about Cruz, "There was no emotion. It was pure logic. In Ted's mind, he was never wrong. He viewed himself as ideologically pure."  I do not think Rob Marks would have a difficult time recognizing the Ted Cruz of today because it appears to me he has not changed.

Edward Bergman, a New Jersey lawyer who taught Cruz in a course on alternative dispute resolution, said Cruz's classroom manner and written work displayed a smugness that made him unpopular. I am glad I had an opportunity to read that article because that is the same feeling I get when Cruz addresses the Senate or in the recent debates. It's a smug, know-it-all attitude like he demonstrated on Greta Van Susteren show on 12/18/15 on Fox News. I now know I am not the only one that feels that way about him.

When Cruz filibustered in 2013 against Obamacare for 21 hours and 19 minutes, many conservative thought they saw a man standing up for their principles. I was and still am against Obamacare, but what I saw during the filibuster was an arrogant, uncompromising, hardheaded, stubborn man who thought his ideas were the only correct ideas. What did he accomplish with the filibuster theatrics, except get some television exposure? We still got Obamacare. If Cruz had been willing to work with others and compromise a little maybe he could have gotten some amendments to Obamacare that would have made the plan better.

To be in politics you must be willing to compromise. Politics is all about give and take in order to accomplish goals. Obama is a failure in politics because he does not understand the art of compromise.  Even though Cruz claims “half a loaf is better than none” his actions do not reflect that.  Like Obama Cruz loves intellectual arguments for the sake of arguing. Like Obama Cruz would perhaps make a better professor than politician. Like Obama Cruz could care less who criticizes him and he is not interested in finding out why they criticize him because he has already concluded he is right.

How tough will Cruz be on Wall Street since his wife Heidi Cruz is a managing director of Goldman Sachs in Houston? I know what Cruz says now, but if elected and he has real power over the economy what will he do then. 

His wife claims Ted has learned, “…not to preach at people. People don't want to be judged." She sees a different Ted Cruz than I do or he was so much worse than he is now the change has overwhelmed her.

I have noticed when he is in Iowa, a farm state, he skirts over the fact that he is against farm subsidies and feeds them bushels of political propaganda on, "Abolish the IRS"; the “EPA is completely lawless" and “over the past 17 years, the planet has seen "no warming whatsoever."

 Cruz likes to tell the story about a 6-foot-6 African American guard walking up to him and saying, “I didn't vote for you, but I'll say this: You've done what you said you'd do", if elected president the farmers of Iowa will be able to say, I did vote for you and you’ve done what you said you would do you took our subsidies away – we didn’t hear you say it, but we now know you said it to others.

Cruz still has excellent debate skills and he knows what to say and what not to say at the appropriate times. Cruz is to public speaking what Michael Phelps was to swimming. Cruz is the Republican Barack Obama. He is a Huckabee Christian Conservative. He can demonstrate he is a bit of Ron Paul when it serves him well. He is the Tea Partiers candidate because his goal is to push the Republican Party as far right as possible.

Ted Cruz truly believes the Declaration of Independence's promises people certain unalienable Rights. He believes certain freedoms are every human's birthright and that governments must protect those rights. Ted Cruz has always demonstrated that he is for the underdog. Cruz stands for many things I stand for, but what frightens me about Cruz is he is not flexible in his thinking, once he has decided he is right he seems to close his mind to further discussion.

I know Cruz is against abortion, but I am not clear why he is against abortion. Does he oppose abortion because it is murder (moral) or that terminating a pregnancy violates natural order and natural law is the basis of the Constitution (intellectual) — is it an intellectual or moral issue for Cruz? The difference speaks to his real evangelical roots. Evangelicals are against abortion for moral reasons regardless of any intellectual argument. Pro- right groups can argue for abortion based solely on intellectual reasoning. I know Cruz loves intellectual debates, but what about moral debates.

Cruz would be for a Constitutional Amendment limiting the Federal Governments power. At a 2010 Federalist Society panel he stated, "If one embraces the views of Madison...which is that men are not angels and that elected politicians will almost always seek to expand their power, then the single most effective way to restrain government power is to provide a constraint they can't change."  If elected and he pursued the Amendment change it would be divisive and it would take up valuable time an administration needs to deal with more relevant crisis.

As Solicitor General for Texas Cruz went before the Supreme Court eight times, five involved the death penalty, with Cruz arguing that Texas should be allowed to execute the mentally ill.  Was the argument a moral issue or an intellectual issue for him? You may ask what difference it makes. Again, I think it speaks to his conservative religious views he constantly touts.

 No one's is a bigger promoter of Ted Cruz than Ted Cruz. The Austin American-Statesman pointed out that he took credit for a case that was actually argued and won by Gregg Abbott, then Texas Attorney General, now Governor of Texas. He actually claimed the victory as one of his own high-court victories. Journalists who have interviewed him have commented “Ted Cruz loves to talk about Ted Cruz”.

Cruz should give credit to the super-PAC’s, and a flurry of barnstorming by national conservatives, including Rand Paul, Jim DeMint, and Sarah Palin for his runoff win for the Senate. Cruz dishonestly ran as an outsider even though his credentials—Harvard Law Review, Rehnquist court, Bush campaign, Perry administration did not truly fit that billing. Cruz can speak the language of established Republicans and Tea Party Republicans and that is one of his greatest assets – he can live in both worlds as needed.

Cruz can and will break out in a few lines of Spanish when he thinks it will benefit him even though he cannot carry on a conversation in Spanish.  Cruz is the typical educated politician, use car salesman, door to door vacuum cleaner salesman. He will say and does what he thinks will help him win. The argument he is having with Rubio at the moment over immigration/citizenship is an example of that.

Cruz touts the 10th Amendment theories most prominent during the civil rights clashes of the 1950s and '60s, when Southern governors touted their (nonexistent) right to invalidate federal laws. His social conservatism takes us back to the '90s, when the gay rights agenda (which Cruz has pledged to combat in DC) was seen lurking around every corner. His fear of international treaties as a gateway to the dissolution of American sovereignty might have fit right in during the Eisenhower era. Many of Cruz’s ideas are not new.

Cruz supports a Constitutional amendment mandating that Congress pass a balanced budget. He argues that this is the best way to cut down deficits and the debt. I agree that we must have a balanced budget. I think that politicians are so dishonest we can never have a balance budget unless the Constitution demands it. If politicians are going to seek an amendment change on the budget now may be the time to do it.  But, Cruz would most likely want to tie the 10^th Amendment argument to it and it would all be a waste of time and money.

Cruz wants to reduce corporate tax rates to 15 percent and cut federal subsidies for renewable fuels. I definitely could support lowering corporate tax rates because I believe it would improve the economy and create jobs. I am for stopping subsidies of all kinds to private for profit corporations. No one ever financed one of my business ventures and I do not want to finance someone else’s. Business ventures are always a risk and those who stand to profit from them should take the risk and not the taxpayers.

Cruz is a proponent of a simpler tax code. Politicians have been saying we need a simpler tax code for thirty years, but they take no action to accomplish it when in office. I do not think Cruz is any different.  Although he does claim he is for a ‘flat tax’ which I would support.

Cruz is for each individual states defining “marriage”. I am not a supporter of that. All Americans should be guaranteed the same equal rights in all States regardless of where they live in the United States. This could prohibit gay couples from seeking advancement in employment in other states. It could prevent gay couples from living where they want to live. It could prevent gay couples from living near their families. It could create problems for couples when traveling and sickness occurred. There are all sorts of problems with States defining marriage. I once supported what Cruz stands for, but now I see the problems it can and would create. I am not against a national vote to decide the legal definition of marriage, but I would oppose not offering gay couples the same rights as heterosexual couples in committed relationships. I understand that the term ‘marriage’ has traditional meaning to many Americans.

Cruz stand on gays is confusing because in April, he sounded more open-minded at a New York reception hosted by two gay businessmen. Cruz, an attendee told the New York Times reporter, "He would have no problem if one of his daughters was gay." It could be Cruz just trying to say the right thing at the right time to win once again demonstrating his ‘debate and public speaking skills’.

Like Cruz I am for requiring all judges to stand for election at least every four years, but I would exempt Supreme Court Judges from the law.  I still favor lifetime terms for Supreme Court Judges because I feel it brings more continuity to the legal system and American way of life. I do not want Supreme Court Judges making decisions based on the current whims of Americans because they have to stand for reelection.

Ted Cruz supports building the Keystone XL pipeline. I support Keystone XL pipeline and believe that any politicians that values the interest of the American people would support it. Obama allowed tree huggers to keep him from doing what was best for employment and the economy. Obama is responsible for many American families’ suffering needlessly for non-existent environmental concerns.

Ted Cruz favors deportation of unauthorized immigrants. It is not clear to me or to Greta on Fox News how he would accomplish the deportation. He wants those that want immediate round up and deportation to believe he would do that, while those, like me, who want illegal aliens deported as they are caught he wants us to believe he would proceed in that manner.

In 1999 Cruz urged Mr. Bush, to state his opposition to illegal immigration and to urge enforcement of border restrictions. At the same time, he reminded Mr. Bush we need to remember that many of those coming here are coming to feed their families, to have a chance at a better life. It is not quite the same as calling illegal immigration “an act of love,” as Jeb Bush did last year, but Mr. Cruz’s advice to Mr. Bush in 1999 was sharply different than in 2015 as he seeks to create distance between him and Mr. Rubio.

Cruz supports expanding foreign trade and voted to give President Obama fast-track authority for getting the Trans-Pacific Partnership through Congress. I did not like the typical Washington backroom deals that allowed the bill to get to the floor, but I to would support a bill that would create jobs, growth, and opportunity for struggling American families.

Latest polls put the candidates standing at: Donald Trump 34%, Ted Cruz 18%, Marco Rubio 13%, Jeb Bush 7% , Ben Carson 6% , Chris Christie 5%, 4% each for Carly Fiorina and Mike Huckabee, 2% each for John Kasich and Rand Paul, 1% each for Lindsey Graham and Rick Santorum, and less than 1% each for Jim Gilmore and George Pataki.

Can Cruz win in 2016?  The Tea Party supporters believe Cruz can win in the general election. I do not think ‘purest’ do well in the Republican Party in the end. Republicans tend to support more moderate candidates when it comes to the final vote. I do not think just nominating a ‘purest’ conservative is going to win the general election for the Republicans. 

Now that the field of candidates appears to be down to Trump, Cruz and Rubio I believe voters will start taking a more critical look at all the candidate and they will find Cruz is not all he claims to be. Cruz to me is just a more polished politician than Trump. Both are egotistical maniacs – in love with themselves. 

If I were to support either I would choose Trump because I see Cruz as a snake hiding in the grass waiting to attack.  I cannot get past my feeling that Rubio seems too young and too immature to be President of the United States. I was optimistic when the primary campaigns began, but not so optimistic now. Who is going to win I honestly do not know.

++Did Cruz not prove Cruz is for Cruz at the Republican Convention and is the snake that I always claimed he was.