The Real Lessons From Bill Clinton's Welfare Reform [theatlantic.com]

There is no difference between a “Republican” and a “Democrat.” The only difference is that for decades the Democrats did all they could to fleece the votes out of those from extreme poverty with a MYTHICAL LIE that so many of us were convinced of.   The Mythical Lie - The Democrats care.   I cannot begin to express the anguish I feel for being such a fool who could believe such a lie. 

I grew up on AFDC and it wasn’t a panacea. I wasn’t a lazy child. In fact I was a child slave, My dad told me so. I fixed combines and tractors, hoed in the fields and picked pickles besides the Mexican migrants who happened to be my best friends.   I was as good as them but my skills in this area were something I was told by smart, well-educated folks wasn’t something to put on your college entry resume. I guess you are supposed to be ashamed of working in the fields. 

Ending AFDC started with the Republicans as did the “Crime Bill.”   These two abominations started with Newt Gingrich who played good cop/bad cop with the Clintons. Neoliberalism is just the back side of Neoconservatism and at this point they are the same. It was a Democrat who brought us the largest caging of children the world has ever seen. It was a Democrat who plunged millions of American kids into deeper poverty. And many of you chastised me because I didn’t vote for his wife. 

No matter how hard you work to end ACEs, no matter how fast you run, the destruction of our kids by this selfish thing called Neoliberalism cannot be overcome. Kids need a basic level of safety. That doesn’t exist now. Even though I grew up with 10 ACEs, I still went to college and medical school. It’s not possible now. 

And to those people who support Donald Trump, consider this: Some of those poor people are your grandkids and the food stamp allotment they have is a nothing compared to the amount of your taxes going to Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman. We are killing our kids. We are killing the US. Only a depraved people would allow the existence of homeless kids and homeless veterans. 

You know I grew up on welfare and I became a doctor out of hideous conditions. I pay a lot of taxes that I don’t want to see a dime going to the military contractors.   I want my taxes going to build up America and support our soldiers. I want my taxes to promote a peaceful world because you don’t end ACEs with guns and bombs and war. You don’t end ACEs when children or their parents are town apart limb from limb.

And I don’t want people bashing soldiers. Being a soldier was one of the only ways to escape the deep poverty where I grew up. The soldiers don’t make the decision to engage in never ending and unjust wars. 

When Dr. Felitti came to Alpena, a reporter from MPR interviewed us and wrote up an article on a Michigan Public Radio site called “State of Opportunity.”  After that article another reporter from the same organization, after learning of how I left poverty to graduate from UM, asked me if she could interview some people where I grew up and myself and check out the town I grew up in to write about how people could help kids escape poverty.   She liked the rural angle because they hadn’t done much with that. After talking to a few school teachers, she called me up and told me that she was still writing the story but would focus on the Detroit and Ann Arbor area because “There is no way to escape poverty where you come from.”   Three years later in 2017, my high school was finally closed down. 

I’d really like you all to think hard and deep, is there really any difference between a Republican and a Democrat?  Or are these two groups actually  systematically destroying children in America.  I see the systematic destruction of children and it has been getting worse and escalating for the last 40 years just like the well being of children in this country has gone down the drain.

Debbie Stabenow voted to cut SNAP and Obama worked to reduce food stamps too.