Even liberal Sen. Moynihan NY [D] understood that our subsidy for only the moms who live alone with kids created the unintended consequence of sperm donors. Moynihan was one of the designers of welfare reform passed under Clinton. Of course, the five year limit on recipients came and went. What could Bush do? Be accused of letting kids starve? I don’t think so. So the unintended consequences continue – when the government wants more of something, they subsidize it.
The Dole (for families out of work) was a time tested system and it didn’t require that dads leave their families. Yet in the 1960’s, social workers and police made midnight raids on the projects here in Omaha, routing out “Cheaters”. Dads who couldn’t or wouldn’t find work were cheaters and were forced to leave their children or watch them suffer in poverty. And tens of millions of fatherless children later, look what we have. At least before AFDC, the children were often raised in extended families and had a pseudo-father in their home.
One of the winners in the last 40 years was the education establishment (including Carter’s Department of Education). The money flowing into the TAC building (a once great technical high school in Omaha) and bureaucrats across the State at the District, ESU and State levels devour close to a billion of our tax dollars annually with less than 1/2 of that sum going into the classroom for the teachers. In return we get promises of better outcomes for the kids with no consequences for programs that don’t work. In fact, when the request is made for actual scores that can be compared across schools or teachers, even the Unicameral has to threaten the State Board of Education. When these new programs don’t fix the problem, we are presented with more new programs on top of the old ones. Once a program is in place, their stated goal becomes muddied by their budgetary goal. With property values dropping, will the district spending be cut back? No. In fact, the Learning Community taxing authority is being added as another layer. Moving out of the OPS district because you disagreed with their policies makes no difference now, we all pay for OPS even though we have no voting power there. We pay not only through the Learning Community but by State aid.
Anyone who truly wants the madness in North Omaha to stop has to face this Hayek truth:
"Hayek’s greatest contribution lay in the discovery of a simple yet profound truth: man does not and cannot know everything, and when he acts as if he does, disaster follows. He recognised that socialism, the collectivist state, and planned economies represent the ultimate form of hubris, for those who plan them attempt-with insufficient knowledge-to redesign the nature of man. In so doing, would-be planners arrogantly ignore traditions that embody the wisdom of generations; impetuously disregard customs whose purpose they do not understand; and blithely confuse the law written on the hearts of men-which they cannot change-with administrative rules that they can alter at whim."
The Great Society tried to redesign welfare for moms with kids and tore apart the wisdom of an extended family solution which grew out of hundreds, maybe thousands of years of custom. Coming soon to our inner city communities are free public daycare centers with the thought that daycares are a better place for these kids than in their homes (starting practically at birth). Its true that many children are at risk in dysfunctional homes but gains from preschool statistically are gone by 3rd grade.
If you watched ‘Dances with Wolves’, recall the female lead was a widow. Women and children are moved into an existing family structure and protected by that family's head.
What have we done to our families by redesigning compassion? There may be no repairing it now. Margaret Mead had said that once the relationship of men with provider and father is severed, it will be difficult if not impossible to repair.
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