Cloward and Piven, What Was Their Infamous 1966 Strategy?

Cloward and PivenIn 1966 Cloward and Piven wrote a now infamous Nation piece titled “The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty”. Many have discussed the meaning and intent of the piece, but what was it really, and would it have achieved their intended goals?

The strategy was well designed, and in fact quite consistent with U.S. Military Doctrine complete with “Ends”, “Ways” and “Means”.

“Strategy is all about how (way or concept) leadership will use the power (means or resources) available to the state to exercise control over sets of circumstances and geographic locations to achieve objectives (ends) that support state interests.”

In order to simplify and expose Cloward and Piven’s strategy, its been framed under the above three categories, using their own words (shown in italics) from the “Nation” article.

First, Cloward and Piven’s “Ends” or their Objective:

  • Using legislation, A federal program of income redistribution has become necessary to elevate the poor en masse from poverty.
  • The ultimate objective of this strategy: to wipe out poverty by establishing a guaranteed annual income…by the outright redistribution of income.
  • The income must meet two criteria:
    • First, adequate levels of income must be assured.
    • Second, the right to income must be guaranteed.
  • A federal income program would not only redeem local governments from the immediate crisis but would permanently relieve them of the financially and politically onerous burdens of public welfare
  • Legislative measures to provide direct income to the poor would permit national Democratic leaders to cultivate ghetto constituencies.

Next, the Cloward and Piven Strategy’s Ways, or “How” It Would Be Achieved:

  • It is our purpose to advance a strategy which affords the basis for a convergence of civil rights organizations, militant anti-poverty groups and the poor.
  • The strategy we propose, is a massive drive to recruit the poor onto the welfare rolls by precipitating a profound financial and political crisisand to impel action on a new federal program to distribute income.
  • A national Democratic administration would advance a federal solution to poverty that would override local welfare failures, local class and racial conflicts and local revenue dilemmas.
    • By the internal disruption of local bureaucratic practices
    • And by the collapse of current financing arrangements.
  • In order to generate a crisis, the poor must obtain benefits, which they have forfeited.
    • Crisis can occur spontaneously (e.g., riots) or as the intended result of tactics of demonstration and protest
  • Massive educational campaign Brochures describing benefits in simple, clear language, and urging people to seek their full entitlements, should be distributed door to door in tenements and public housing projects, and deposited in stores, schools, churches and civic centers. Advertisements should be placed in newspapers; sport announcements should be made on radio. Leaders of social, religious, fraternal and political groups in the slums should also be enlisted to recruit the eligible to the rolls.
  • Advocacy must be supplemented by organized demonstrations to create a climate of militancy.

Last, the Cloward and Piven Strategy’s Means, or the “Power or Resources Available”

  • These are the conditions, then, for an effective crisis strategy.
  • Hearings and court actions will require lawyers most cases will not require an expert knowledge of law, but only of welfare regulations. To aid workers in these centers, handbooks should be prepared describing welfare rights and the tactics to employ in claiming them.
  • Mass media should be used to advance arguments.
  • Cadres of aggressive organizers would have to come from the civil rights movement and the churches, from militant low-income organizations like those formed by the Industrial Areas Foundation (that is, by Saul Alinsky), and from other groups on the Left.
  • Public resources have always been the fuel for low-income urban political organization. If organizers can deliver millions of dollars in cash benefits to the ghetto masses, it seems reasonable to expect that the masses will deliver their loyalties to their benefactors.

In July, 2015: In honor ofThe Nations 150th anniversary, Frances Fox Piven…contributed a new introduction to the1966 piece she wrote with Richard Cloward.”

In that introduction Piven stated that Glenn Beck and others got it wrong. She and Cloward weren’t trying to bring down American capitalism, with the piece “The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty”that was far too ambitious a goal.

She stated in the strategy that cities like NY are too financially strained to provide the welfare income that they call for.

  • In New York City, where the Mayor is now facing desperate revenue shortages, welfare expenditures are already second only to those for public education. An increase in the rolls of a mere 20 per cent would cost an already over burdened municipality some $100 million.

According to the CBO, in 1966, when their article was first published, the Federal Governments total national debt was only $263.7 Billion. How things have changed! It is now 72 times larger at over $19 Trillion, with America’s unfunded liabilities over $100 Trillion, and both are rapidly climbing. America’s credit rating under President Obama was downgraded by the S&P in 2011, for the first time in history dropping below AAA.

The national debt owes its origins to the very War on Poverty programs that Cloward and Piven strategized to expand, eclipsing $22 Trillion in payments so far.

Whether intentional or not, the Cloward and Piven Strategy’s impact is the same. Maximizing welfare recipients, and instituting an unconditional right to a perpetual salary would bankrupt the country all the same. America’s current debt path, according to the CBO, is unsustainable. Adding welfare costs instead of growing opportunity and rolling it back only accelerates America’s financial collapse.

What Rubio Failed to State in Response to Christie

Conventional Wisdom is the Marco Rubio Crashed and Burned due to a repetitive statement at Saturday's debate.

Conventional Wisdom is that Marco Rubio Crashed and Burned due to a repetitive statement at Saturday’s debate.

Marco Rubio got hammered in the media, and by many of the GOP candidates because of his poor debate performance Saturday. Criticism stems from his so-called robotic responses in the debate. Ironically, what Rubio said is exactly right, and its right on two levels. He said:

And let’s dispel once for once and for all with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing.

Rubio said essentially that same statement three more times. Admittedly, each one seemingly more out of place. The fourth time he said it was in response to a challenge by Governor Chris Christie that Marco doesn’t have the experience necessary to be president. Marco Rubio reverted back to that same comment:

I think anyone who believes Barack Obama isn’t doing what he’s doing on purpose doesn’t understand what were dealing with here.

As mentioned, there are two messages in that phrase.

The first message is precisely what Rubio stated.

  1. Barack Obama meant the harm that he’s inflicted on America!

We all know that before he was elected Obama ran on fundamentally changing America. He had to dislike our country to feel compelled to fundamentally alter it. You have to fundamentally change it from something into something else. He ran on passingObama care. He wanted to do that. It was intentional. Hillary Clinton tried and couldn’t get it done. Bill Clinton tried and couldn’t did get it done. Barack Obama did. He’s done immense damage to our military. He’s done immense damage to our relationships with our allies. He’s elevated our enemies. He made a deal with Iran essentially insuring that they’re going to get a nuclear weapon. It’s only a matter of time. He’s done immeasurable damage from his executive orders, to the $10 trillion that he’s added to our national debt, to setting back race relations 50 years. These are leftist progressive ideological results, based upon clear intent as taught by radical leftist Saul Alinsky.

The second message in Rubio’s 4 statements must be inferred because unfortunately, to Marco Rubio’s detriment, he didn’t come out and state it. Perhaps he will in a future debate? Regardless, it’s absolutely as true as 1 above and would have rebutted Chris Christie’s attack that Rubio shouldn’t be president since he wasn’t a governor with executive experience.

  1. Barack Obama was neither a governor nor an executive. He never formally led anything. He was barely a US senator for more than about 179 days before he started running for president. Despite no qualifications beyond being a “community organizer” Obama was wildly effective in instituting his radical agenda.

I think what Marco Rubio was trying to say is that he has every bit, if not more experience than Barack Obama had when he took the oath of office. He is every bit as committed ideologically in opposition to Obama, and will be just as effective in undoing the damage Obama inflicted and will put America back on the right path.

I’m not a Rubio supporter. He’s not my number one pick, but if it was a choice between Marco Rubio and any of the other establishment candidates it’s not even close.

Is Conservative Talk Radio Turning On Trump?

AM 630 Talk Radio

AM 630 Talk Radio

Have we witnessed the first evidence of a chink in Donald Trump’s venerable campaign armor?

Trump entered the GOP Presidential Nomination race and vaulted from laughable entrant in June of 2015 to front-runner within a little over 30 days. Establishment Republicans and the media attacked Trump from the beginning. It took months of sustained front-runner status for them to conclude that he was going to stay in the race, and that his motivation wasnt publicity, as first speculated.

Despite making numerous statements that the establishment touted as campaign ending, he continued to hold a steady national lead among the GOP field. Trump appeared immune to attacks, blunders and condemnation. The one place that he was not universally condemned however was in conservative talk radio.

Four people specifically avoided the Oklahoma Land Rush to stop Trump. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and Laura Ingraham maintained an even keeled assessment of Trump. They neither endorsed, nor condemned him, but analyzed his ability to dominate media cycles, drown out fellow candidates, and silence critics while taking the fight to his opponents. The result was Trump had top cover within the listening audience, to make his case. Many gave him the benefit of the doubt, and so his support base grew within conservative ranks, but also among independents and some democrat demographics, such as blue-collar workers. Trumps honeymoon with the above four talk radio hosts began to erode in December.

When Ted Cruzs numbers began to steadily rise in Iowa and nationally in early November, Trump moved in to put him down, as he had with Bush in the summer, and Carson in the fall. This time the talk radio reaction was different. The big fourdid not provide nearly the top cover that they had in previous months. They began to question Trump, and at times sided with Ted Cruz. Mark Levin became openly critical, condemning the ludicrous Trump charge that Cruz was ineligible to run for president for example.

The impactmay have played out in Iowa, where Trump lost to Ted Cruz by three points, despite the polls, including entrance polls, predictinga Trump victory.

Both Cruz and Rubio exceeded polling expectations in Iowa, in the highest GOP turnout in history. Trump sagged! Clearly both Cruz and Rubio had strong ground games, which Trumps campaign did not. That likely played a factor as well, but the impact of conservative talk radio on this election should not be underestimated.

The Establishment GOP is reaping the consequences from years of ignoring the will of its base. Rush Limbaugh led the analysisexposing the betrayal. Donald Trump benefited from a retaliatory anger, but the bloom may be off the conservative media rose, and if so, only time will tell if he can capture the nomination without it.

Why Criminal Risk Exposure From Hillary’s Home-Brew Server Is Increasing

SECRET Coversheet: Hillary Clinton Knows That Not All Classified Information Comes With a Coversheet

SECRET Coversheet: It’s The Information That Makes Something Classified, Not The Markings.

Criminal risk exposure from Hillary Clinton’s illegal use of a home email server to conduct her Secretary of State duties grows by the day. Recent statements from her campaign, the State Department and the White House show the intrigue surrounding violations of Hillary’s legal responsibilities to protect America’s secrets continues to mount.

 

On 14 January, Intelligence Community IG Charles McCullough III sent an unclassified memo to senior Congressional lawmakers detailing the intelligence community’s findings of highly classified email/information on Hillary Clinton’s server. Some emails included the highest level of classification (above TOP SECRET) involving Special Access Program (SAP) information. Even the historically damaging espionage by Edward Snowden didn’t compromise that level of classified information.

According to a Fox News Report:

“Highly classified Hillary Clinton emails that the intelligence community and State Department recently deemed too damaging to national security to release contain operational intelligence and their presence on the unsecure, personal email system jeopardized sources, methods and lives, a U.S. government official who has reviewed the documents told Fox News.”

What’s most telling about this revelation is the lack of outrage from the Democrat Party. Remember, it was the Democrat Party that went after President Bush and his Administration over the Valerie Plame “outing”. That was treated by Democrats as treason, but not a word regarding Hillary’s unprotected server, which according to FOX’s source, has done far worse.

The Clinton campaign tried to deflect criticisms regarding emails that the intelligence community marked as too sensitive and damaging to release. The campaign responded with:

We firmly oppose the complete blocking of the release of these emails. This appears to be over-classification run amok. We will pursue all appropriate avenues to see that her emails are released in a manner consistent with her call last year.

Hillary’s campaign seems to be confusing the “complete blocking” of her State Department emails with the protection of National Security. This isn’t surprising since Secretary Clinton herself had the same confusion as the Secretary of State. If she wanted to protect America’s National Secrets and protect OUR records, she never would have set up the illegal server in the first place.

In another, of a series of irrelevant comments regarding classification markings, John Kirby, the State Department’s spokesman, stated on 29 January that the documents referenced in Inspector General Charles McCullough III’s Memo were “not marked classified at the time they were sent”and that the State Department will look at “whether they were classified at the time they were sent”.

As far as whether Federal Laws were broken or not, it doesn’t matter if it was marked, or when the information was classified. The mishandling of it, intentionally or accidentally is all that matters. In the case of Secretary Clinton’s unsecure server, the information was not protected, and puts her in grave legal danger. It’s fair to say that just about anybody else in America would already be under indictment and on their way to prison.

The White House, which refuses in other instances to comment on ongoing investigations, did not hold back regarding Hillary Clinton’s FBI troubles. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest was asked by a reporter on 29 January:

“Can you say with certainty and confidence that Secretary Clinton will not be indicted because of this email scandal?”

He responded:

“That will be a decision made by the Department of Justice and prosecutors over there…What I know that some officials over there have said is that she is not a target of the investigation. So that does not seem to be the direction that it’s trending. But I’m certainly not going to weigh in on a decision or in that process in any way. That is a decision to be made solely by independent prosecutors but again, based on what we know from the Department of Justice, it does not seem to be headed in that direction.”

Ernest also stated:

“I can tell you with full confidence that there is has been no political interference in this process! think the extraordinary request that Secretary Clinton put forward to actually release her emails is something that, Im not sure has a precedent, at least for federal office holders.”

His comment drips with “Clinton Speak”. There shouldn’t be a precedent regarding the requests to release emails, since nobody else in the government was careless enough to use a private server to conduct classified government business. The need to release the emails stems from Hillary’s gross negligence in protecting America’s CLASSIFIED Programs and information.

The State Department also announced that 18 emails between Clinton and President Obama would also be withheld from Friday’s release. It would be fascinating to know what they discussed. Clearly, if the President was emailing Hillary Clinton at her home server, with a home address, he should have known that the address wasn’t a “.gov” address. Obama stated before that he learned of Hillary’s server from the press. The 18 withheld emails suggest otherwise.

More:

The Missing Question In The Hillary Email Scandal?