6) The lords of war
by WW
7) Study confirms human cost of welfare 'reform'
by WW
8) Letter to WW
by WW
EDITORIAL: THE LORDS OF WAR
There has been a lot in the media lately about "warlords" in
Afghanistan. The U.S. war was not a war of liberation for
Afghanistan; it was a war to subjugate Afghanistan. That's
why after U.S. imperialist forces crushed the Taliban, local
military leaders have emerged to wield power. There is no
objection from the U.S. military, as long as these local
leaders do not challenge the Pentagon's overall domination.
These local military leaders make their fortune in the time-
honored method of many up-and-coming capitalists: theft and
extortion.
But let's face it, when it comes to being "warlords," the
Afghan local militarists are small potatoes. The masters of
war have another location--Washington. There, even the
secretary of state--often called a moderate among the far-
right militarists that dominate the Bush administration--is
a lifetime military officer.
Most of the rest of those directing the administration--and
their "advisers" on the outside--are involved in what has
been called the "Wolfowitz cabal." Assistant Defense
Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, despite his recent cautious
comments to the press, is associated with the most
belligerent program of the U.S. ruling class, especially
with the drive to make war on Iraq. While the "cabal" is
known too well to be really a secret society, it takes its
decisions without benefit of even a fa�ade of democratic
consultations.
Who are in this gang? Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, for
one. Henry Kissinger. Former CIA Director James Woolsey.
Newt Gingrich. Former Defense Secretaries Harold Brown and
James Schlesinger. Richard Perle.
They are the old hawks of the Cold War. As one option for
U.S. imperialist policy, they blithely planned a nuclear
first strike on the Soviet Union. That it might result in 30
million deaths in the U.S. didn't stop their planning. That
it would kill a hundred million USSR inhabitants didn't even
slow them down. In their zeal to defend capitalist
exploitation worldwide and to destroy socialism wherever it
existed, they were unequaled.
Last spring's confrontation with the People's Republic of
China is only one example of the influence that this
militaristic approach to enforcing Washington's will on the
world has within the Bush administration. That the Pentagon
can on two successive days demand a $20-billion budget
increase and announce that the U.S. is establishing long-
term--read permanent--bases in Central Asia shows that the
administration is committed to expanding to unending war.
These old "Cold Warriors" are the high-paid servants and in
some cases part of the U.S. imperialist ruling class. The
members of this elite class have only one policy: to keep
themselves on top and in control of the global capitalist
profit system. To ensure their domination they are willing
to risk anything and everything--except their own lives and
well being of course.
They are utterly ruthless, but that does not make them all-
knowing or all-powerful. They overestimate their own
strength, which is based on destruction and fear. They were
not ready for the spreading capitalist recession and they
have no real answer to stop it. They may think that they are
on top of the world today, but they know that that control
is shaky at best.
It is in times of economic recession and desperation that
the capitalist ruling class has shown it strongest
tendencies to launch wars. That is the real danger on the
horizon, the threat of more wars led by the Pentagon.
The Afghan "warlords" are just local capitalist-style
gangsters. The true lords of war are in Washington.
- END -
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From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (WW)
Date: keskiviikko 16. tammikuu 2002 02:49
Subject: [WW] Study confirms human cost of welfare 'reform'
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan. 17, 2002
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
STUDY CONFIRMS HUMAN COST OF WELFARE "REFORM"
By Bryan G. Pfeifer
Milwaukee
A report issued Dec. 23 confirms what many W-2 critics have
long charged: that, although carefully concealed by
politicians, big business and the corporate media,
Wisconsin's "welfare reform" has led to a catastrophic
social crisis not seen in Milwaukee in decades.
On a daily basis the poor in Milwaukee, including thousands
of children, face packed emergency shelters in the midst of
a bitterly cold Wisconsin winter. They find food pantry
shelves bare and are turned away from emergency rooms for
lack of health insurance as a direct result of the failure
of W-2, concludes the report "Passing the Buck: W- 2 and
Emergency Services in Milwaukee County."
The report documents that since the implementation of
"Wisconsin Works" or W-2 on Sept. 1, 1997, private non-
profit programs and churches "are providing the only safety
net for many families in need."
"Low-wage employment and problems with the W-2 program and
its implementation have resulted in a growing number of
persons who rely on emergency programs to meet their
families' most basic needs," states the report.
Issued by the Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee,
the Center for Economic Development at the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and the Institute for Wisconsin's
Future, "Passing the Buck" tracks three primary areas from
1995 to 2000 vital to a satisfactory standard of living:
food security, housing and health care.
The report's data was compiled by conducting five
confidential interviews with directors of community service
agencies in the areas of food security, housing and
healthcare, and a survey of 157 Milwaukee-area congregations
to determine services rendered by faith-based organizations
and how emergency services changed from 1995 to 2000.
The report's goal "was to assess how families are meeting
basic needs in the absence of AFDC, to determine whether
community organizations have experienced increased need
during the implementation of welfare replacement, and to
evaluate the sustainability of work-based, time-limited cash
assistance."
The report concludes with numerous policy recommendations. A
copy of the report can be downloaded at
www.wisconsinsfuture.org.
Key findings of the study include:
* Food-related referrals to community hotlines increased by
136 percent between 1996 and 2000.
* There was a 49 percent increase in the number of people
served by food pantries over the five-year period.
* Referrals to emergency shelter by the centralized shelter
hotline increased 53 percent between 1998 and 2000.
* Overflow homeless shelters served three times as many
people per night in 2000 as in 1997. Emergency shelters are
operating at capacity almost constantly. The gap between
demand for emergency shelter and available space has
increased by 406 percent since 1997.
* The amount of charitable health care provided by area
hospitals doubled between 1995 and 1999 and the number of
unpaid medical debts rose 82 percent.
The report's authors underscore the fact that these numbers
were compiled during an economic upswing. Under the current
recession, officially in effect since March 2001, the
authors foresee a possible epidemic of poverty unless
immediate action is taken.
THE IMPLEMENTATION OF 'WELFARE REFORM'
Under the national Welfare Reform Bill signed by former
Democratic President Bill Clinton in August 1996, Aid to
Families with Dependent Children--a guaranteed federal
entitlement program in effect for over 60 years--was
dismantled. AFDC was replaced by a time-limited, work-based
act entitled Temporary Assistance to Needy Families.
TANF lifted most federal mandates on all 50 states, thereby
allowing them to develop their own workfare programs, as
they came to be known. Under AFDC, states were required to
abide by strict federal mandates. With TANF, up for Congress
reauthorization this year, states were allowed to create
their own limits and programs with a bare minimum of federal
oversight and regulation.
Currently, the maximum lifetime limit for TANF benefits is
five years. If recipients use up this time, they are on
their own to survive. States are allowed to choose their own
limits below the five-year TANF maximum. Wisconsin's is two
years.
Policies directed at "reforming welfare" first gained a
foothold in the early 1990s in Milwaukee, home of the $700-
million arch-conservative Lynde and Harry Bradley
Foundation. The richest and most influential of the
conservative philanthropic foundations, Bradley funded the
notoriously racist book "The Bell Curve," helped implement
school vouchers, funded the movements that overturned
affirmative action in California and Texas, and underwrote
the development of W-2 through the Hudson Institute.
The foundation's overall objective is not only the complete
reversal of all government programs benefiting the poor but
also services, like public education, vital to the workers
and even the middle class.
Wisconsin became known as a leader in welfare reform in the
United States by implementing a pilot program, "Pay for
Performance," in 1996 as a precursor to the 1997 national
legislation. This program created incentives for county
welfare agencies to reduce caseloads.
Much like the later W-2 program, Pay for Performance's
success was predicated simply on how many people could be
dropped from welfare, not on their quality of life after
leaving the program.
With the beginning of W-2, Wisconsin created a demanding
workfare program, whereby private agencies with multi-year
state contracts replaced counties and the state in
dispensing services to W-2 recipients.
The private agencies--according to numerous investigations
by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and other media and
community organizations--benefited from this because profit
motives were built "into the contracts that rewarded
agencies for providing minimum levels of service," according
to "Passing the Buck."
This, coupled with a lack of federal and state oversight,
has created a program rife with heart-rending consequences
for thousands, say activists, critics and many W-2
recipients.
W-2: A FAILING PROGRAM
The facts presented in "Passing the Buck" bolster the
assertions and work done by W-2 critics, who for years have
stressed that privatizing social services like AFDC would
deliver untold devastation to Wisconsin, especially to women
and children of color residing in poor Milwaukee
communities.
Some critics of W-2 have argued that the program was created
to secure a reserve pool of cheap labor for major
corporations and non-profit service agencies. They further
argue that those in power used W-2 to batter down other long-
held government-controlled institutions like public
education.
"Passing the Buck" verifies the grievances of W-2 recipients
and their supporters by illuminating the onerous guidelines
and other negative provisions of W-2 that, despite small
concessions, have been largely ignored by the state and
Milwaukee County.
Features of W-2 include the aforementioned time-limits, a
"job ready" category that enables W-2 providers to deny
services to anyone deemed employable, state policies that
direct W-2 agencies to divert people from applying, forcing
applicants to seek help from family, friends and neighbors
before processing their applications or requiring a 60-day
job search, and limited options for pursuing education or
skills development.
With state contracts stipulating that private agencies
administering W-2 are to receive bonuses for reducing
welfare rolls, the number of Milwaukee County W-2 recipients
has declined 63 percent--from 36,155 in 1997 to 13,351 in
2000. Various private agency executives in Milwaukee have
received six-figure bonuses and other perks such as vacation
packages for moving people off W-2, despite clear evidence
that these individuals needed more help.
REDUCING NUMBERS DOESN'T MEAN SUCCESS
In fact, as "Passing the Buck" documents, many former W-2
recipients were pushed into low-wage, non-union seasonal or
service-oriented jobs. In their rush to garner profits, the
agencies instructed social workers who met and interviewed
recipients to deny aid such as food stamps, childcare and
bus passes. Many W-2 recipients have issued grievances about
the demeaning and erratic behavior of social workers who are
being forced to shuttle recipients out of the program
despite real and justified needs. Independent investigations
by a variety of sources, including the Milwaukee Journal
Sentinel, have confirmed this.
The implementation of W-2 also made it more difficult to
enroll in federal entitlement programs like food stamps and
Medicaid. The conservative Hudson Institute itself concluded
that 71 percent of former W-2 recipients are still in
poverty.
Most glaringly, the agencies didn't track the former
recipients. Thus, various researchers have found that, at
most, two-thirds of those who've left AFDC or W-2 since 1995
became employed; the rest are simply unaccounted for. The
state freely admits that it can't determine their
whereabouts or well being.
W-2 proponents claim that simply dropping persons from W-2
is a success, regardless of their quality of life after
leaving the program.
Critics claim that this is a shallow outlook and one that
ignores enormous institutional social barriers such as
discrimination based on class, sex, sexual identity and
race, and the political/economic context in which W-2 was
created and continues.
SUFFERING WORSE THAN DESCRIBED
Some aspects of the reality endured by many of the poor are
actually worse than described in the report findings.
One example is evictions. Because evicting tenants is costly
and time-consuming, most landlords find other means to
evict, thereby overriding the legal process. Tenants also
leave apartments when they can't make the rent. Therefore
housing stability is difficult to quantify. Even the rather
conservative Apartment Association of Southeastern
Wisconsin, a local association of landlords, admits in a
1999 handout that the number of tenants that vacate
immediately prior to a formal eviction process is four to
eight times the number of actual evictions recorded.
Another area that keeps the poor in debt is the emergency
room, documents "Passing the Buck." Lacking insurance or
denied Medicaid or other healthcare relief by a W-2 service
provider, a recipient has no choice but to use the emergency
room, not only for crises but for basic medical care,
especially if one has children.
This leaves a poor recipient with a low-wage job, or no job
at all, mired in an often-unrecoverable cycle of debt,
causing untold social and psychological consequences for the
individual and society that can't be quantified in any
study.
Perhaps the most shocking statistics in the report fall in
the area of housing, which is especially critical when the
bitter cold Wisconsin winter sets in.
"Since January 1997, the American Red Cross and Interfaith
Conference of Greater Milwaukee have operated an Emergency
Overflow Shelter for women and children. In 2000, the
shelter opened four times as many nights as in 1997, and the
number of women per night nearly tripled. ... The difference
between demand for and availability of emergency shelter
increased 406 percent between 1997 and 2000," states the
report.
On a freezing mid-December night last month the Milwaukee
Rescue Mission, an overflow shelter often used only as a
last recourse, was completely full for the first time in its
decades-long history.
"This research shows how changes in the welfare system have
affected Milwaukee's communities," said Dr. Kathleen
Mulligan-Hansel, of the Institute for Wisconsin's Future and
report co-author.
"Since welfare reform was implemented, communities have
stepped in, investing more in programs to support low-income
families. We should be asking if this system is sustainable
or if there is a natural limit to how much community
organizations can do."
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR SOLUTIONS
"Passing the Buck" concludes with a call for immediate and
long-term solutions on the state and federal level,
beginning with a restoration of a government safety net and,
eventually, an end to privatization of government services.
"Observers and policymakers should question the
sustainability of a system in which private organizations
take responsibility for providing basic support to low-
income families and families in crisis. As the experiment
with welfare reform evolved, the government 'passed the
buck' to community services. Evidence in this study
demonstrates that it is critical for the government to
reclaim responsibility for maintaining a safety for families
in crisis," the report concludes.
The report's recommendations include:
* Improving access and removing barriers to existing support
programs such as food stamps and medical assistance.
* Fully funding existing work supports and removing onerous
user fees and co-payments.
* Modifying or eliminating time limits, especially for
families that are in compliance. Saying time limits are
"arbitrary" and "punitive" and don't take into account
recessions and depressed labor markets, the authors demand
that time limits must be relaxed, especially for those in
compliance and those with multiple barriers.
* Strengthening education and training provisions.
* Ensuring access to work supports. The authors state that
since fully funded work supports like healthcare, childcare
and food stamps are vital to the working poor, they need to
be adequately funded.
* Restoring benefits for legal immigrants. Under TANF, legal
immigrants are denied access to Medicaid and food stamps.
The authors demand that this racist provision be rescinded
immediately.
In a press release announcing the findings of "Passing the
Buck," Pamela Fendt, of the Center for Economic Development
at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and report co-
author, stressed the need for urgency in implementing these
recommendations.
The assault on welfare was begun during a boom period, when
many workers thought they would never need to resort to such
a bare-bones existence. Now that capitalism is once again
experiencing a contraction, the vital importance of such a
safety net is becoming only too painfully clear.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to
copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
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From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (WW)
Date: keskiviikko 16. tammikuu 2002 02:50
Subject: [WW] Letter to WW
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan. 17, 2002
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
LETTER TO THE EDITOR: FIGHT FOR SECTION 8!
Thanks to Heather Cottin for her recent article "Welfare
cuts and job losses = poverty crisis." [Workers World, Dec.
13] We have created an organizing leaflet for the Boston
Women's Fightback Network based on this informative article.
It can be found at www.iacboston.org/wfn.
Cottin's depiction of the economic assault being carried out
at home in the form of welfare cutoffs and mounting layoffs
sure resonates here in Boston. Here, the war budget handed
down by the state legislature, after stalling for five
months, has resulted in deep cuts to funding for AIDS and
substance abuse, mental health, youth services and other
critical health care/social services.
What is the fallout from these cuts? Increased homelessness,
especially among families, rampant job layoffs and life-
threatening cuts in health care and other vital social
services that benefit and support people.
The cynical attempts by the politicians to make the poor pay
for the war have been met by a revived outcry of rage and
activism. During the month of December there were back-to-
back demonstrations at the statehouse organized by activists-
-new and old alikeall fronts, from mental health advocates
and AIDS activists, to recovering addicts and youth outreach
workers.
I work in a program that provides Section 8 housing for
homeless people living with a wide range of disabilities.
Due to skyrocketing rents, the erosion of any remaining
affordable housing in the city, and extreme underfunding by
the federal government, the Section 8 program is severely
under attack.
Cottin's article misstated one fact slightly when it stated
that the Section 8 program has been terminated. This is
surely what the landlords and politicians are aiming for. We
have to fight to make sure that they fail.
Maureen Skehan
Boston
- END -
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