Defund Poverty Inc? Just Go Over the Fiscal Cliff

In 1960, Detroit was 72% white; today, it's 92% black

Memphis, Tennessee. Located in Shelby County, the city of 652,000 is 63 percent black and only 27 percent white. As of 2009, 42 percent of black people in Shelby County were on EBT/Food Stamps, compared to only 6 percent of whites.

We already know that crime follows black people in Memphis wherever they go, courtesy of Section 8 Housing (thanks Atlantic!!).

We already know that Memphis City Schools, an almost entirely black operation, has dissolved its charter to merge with the better managed Shelby County Schools -- because black administrators can't properly run a system and black children produce woeful test scores that bring unwanted scrutiny to the system. 

We already know that Memphis is one of America's most dangerous cities because of its black population.

Now, we know that only with the infusion of (non-existent) federal government money does Memphis exist [Poverty Inc. helps drive Memphis economy:Aid for poor is part of economy, The Commercial Appeal, 12-29-12]:

It is bigger than FedEx Corp.'s $1 billion-plus local payroll.

It is the quiet giant of the local economy.

It's Poverty Inc.

From pawn shops and charities to welfare and Medicaid, the poverty industry pumped an estimated $5.39 billion through the city and county in 2010, according to a study by The Commercial Appeal.

Poring over reports and records, The Commercial Appeal estimated the scale of the poverty industry related to the 100,000 least well off families in the city. The goal: Determine the reliance on federal dollars, which account for about half the poverty dollars here.

Policy leaders in Washington are wrangling over the idea of federal cutbacks, particularly in entitlements. Debate in Washington raised the issue here. How important is federal spending to Memphis's poverty economy?

The Commercial Appeal's study shows federal dollars account for 56 cents of every $1 in the local poverty industry. Of the $5.39 billion, $3.02 billion came from Washington, led by $1.2 billion for Medicaid health insurance and $1.1 billion for the welfare safety net.

In Washington, it's still not clear what programs, if any, may be reduced as lawmakers try to deal with budget deficits. But the reliance on federal spending hasn't been lost on Memphis civic leaders.

"In a way, it would reduce the economic stability of Memphis if the federal government cut back now," said Ruby Bright, executive director of the Women's Foundation For a Greater Memphis.

Just how the newspaper arrived at its $5.39 billion estimate is explained in an analysis today in the Viewpoint section. There are actually more federal dollars flowing into the city and county. But the newspaper focused on the region's impoverished core, the 100,000 least well off families living in the city.

Policy makers in Washington are debating budget cuts at a crucial time for Memphis. From recasting entire neighborhoods to improving grades of Memphis City Schools students, plans are afoot to spruce up Memphis relying on donations and grants, including federal sources. But efforts could fall back amid Washington's general turn toward fiscal austerity.

In Memphis and Shelby County, the poor, the wealthy and those in between received a total of $6.8 billion worth of federal government transfer receipts in 2010, double the amount a decade earlier. The same trend is visible nationally as millions of baby boomers retire every year and receive benefits from federal programs.

Transfer receipts include the traditional welfare aid for the poor as well as social programs nearly everyone else is entitled to, such as Social Security and Medicare, along with particular aid including Veterans Administration benefits and education assistance.

And in a sluggish economy, others have lost jobs and resort to federal disability payments to get by. In Shelby County, temporary disability payments rose sixfold over the decade to $4.3 million in 2010.

"In a good economy, for the better part of the 2000s, employers were much more likely to keep good employees who were chronically ill," said Memphis lawyer Betsy Wilson, a Social Security expert. "As soon as the economy turned down, those people were the first to go."

Politicians note it is often the poorest who have the least voice in Washington. But with lawmakers discussing spending cuts, some executives of Memphis charities say they doubt Washington can maintain aid levels. Michael Allen said he's thinking of new ways to help fund the Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Memphis Inc.

"It's going to put more pressure on us to raise private dollars, whether it's from foundations or from individuals,'' said Allen, executive director of the charity, which runs on $3.9 million spread over multiple programs, including counseling for 430 homeless.

 Poverty Inc.

We could have been on Mars, but for the past 50+ years we've been funding the expansion of Poverty Inc. in not just Memphis, but in places like Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta, Birmingham, Dallas, St. Louis, and Baltimore.

It's been a nationwide dysgenic program paid for with money that could have gone to space exploration, an investment into the breeding of citywide populations of Michael Oher's instead of attempting to push the boundaries of human achievement and knowledge to the Red Planet.

Well, what we've accomplished instead is make Leigh Anne Tuohy feel better about herself and allowed Hollywood to produce a film glorifying Oher's salvation from the mean black streets of Memphis to the only avenue where his labor would produce anything more than minimum wage.

That's progress!

The longer the United States of America is able to provide lavish funds for Poverty Inc., then the fate of cities like Memphis and Birmingham will be inextricably linked to the current conditions of more than 90 percent black Detroit.

Those beneficiaries of Poverty Inc. largess have had quite the run of things in Memphis, with Tennessee Watchdog reporting on the incredible ability of the EBT card to provide lavish purchases in the city that aren't exactly food related [Taxpayers fund special, unusual perks for Memphis welfare recipients, July 28, 2012]. 

This transfer of wealth that funds the very people who help make Memphis one of America's most dangerous cities (and allows for their proliferation) isn't reserved to Elvis Presley's city; think about the violence in Chicago that is almost exclusively black.

Were it not for Poverty Inc. funding a cradle-to-grave society for black people in Chicago, it's hard to imagine the city having 500 murders [Chicago Homicide Rate Spikes, While New York's Plummets, Huffington Post, 12-28-12]:

In a sharp contrast between two of the nation's largest cities, Chicago recorded its 499th murder of 2012 on Thursday night while New York reported 414 murders as of Friday even though it has more than three times the population, according to police.
Plagued by gang violence, Chicago surpassed last year's murder total of 433 in October and is set for the highest rate of homicide since the third largest U.S. city recorded 512 in 2008. The number is likely to top 500 on the last weekend of the year.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced on Friday that the nation's largest city could finish the year with the lowest number of murders and shootings since 1963, when it began keeping comparable data. The number of murders this year in New York is only about one-fifth the total of 2,245 homicides recorded in the peak year of 1990.

Chicago's McCarthy said the city's high murder rate, up 18 percent over last year as of Dec. 16, was due to gang violence. Eighty percent of the homicides were gang-related and 80 percent of the victims were African-Americans, he said.
Blacks make up about 33 percent of the city's population, according to the 2011 estimate from the U.S. Census.
In August, six people were murdered in the city on a single weekend day, the highest one-day death toll of 2012.
McCarthy and other officials blame the surge on a splintering of the city's traditional gangs and the rise of new cliques and factions that are vying, often violently, for control of turf on the city's south and west sides.
The spike in homicides was especially dramatic in the first quarter of the year, when murders jumped 66 percent. So far in the fourth quarter, McCarthy said, the murder rate is down 15 percent compared with the same period last year. Police have arrested 7,000 more gang members this year than in 2011, he said.
"We're doing what we can do and it's working," McCarthy said.
After mounting criticism of Emanuel and McCarthy earlier this year, the police chief announced a shakeup of his department, transferring some police managers among districts to bolster the battle against gangs.

Chicago was not alone in recording a spike in murders this year. The murder rate in Detroit through Dec. 16 was up more than 12 percent over 2011 and at the highest level in nearly two decades, according to the city's police department.
As of Friday, St. Louis had recorded 113 homicides, the same number as 2011 with one weekend to go in 2012, police spokesman David Marzullo said. Across the Mississippi River in East St. Louis, Illinois, 22 murders have been recorded this year in a town of only 27,000 people.
"The numbers just blow you away for a community as small as East St. Louis," said Brendan Kelly, state's attorney for St. Clair County, whose jurisdiction includes East St. Louis.
The East St. Louis murder rate is actually down from 30 in 2011 because of targeted patrolling of crime hot spots, Kelly said.

 What do Memphis, Detroit, East St. Louis, and Chicago's crime problem have in common? Black people, who exist solely on the transfer of wealth that should have funded space exploration but instead powers Poverty Inc.

East. St. Louis is 97 percent black. Located in St. Clair County, 41 percent of black people received EBT/Food Stamps in 2009 compared to six percent of whites.

Detroit? The skyline and infrastructure white people vacated is a testament to the type of civilization white people can collectively create; the condition of the city in 2012 - a 90 percent + black city - is a testament to the type of civilization black people can collectively create.

The Detroit Free Press bemoaned the skyrocketing murder rate in Detroit, without mentioning the racial demographics of the city or that the Motor City exists solely because of Poverty Inc.'s ability to provide financial assistance, which powers the black cradle-to-grave society there.

Were the black population removed from Detroit and replaced with white people of any class, there would be no murder, crime, or poverty problem. Same with Memphis. Same with Chicago. Same with East St. Louis.

Poverty Inc., which is nothing more than a transfer of wealth from productive citizens to allow the existence of a cradle-to-grave society in the ruins of America's once great (now most dangerous), cities must be cut off.

Are you afraid of the Fiscal Cliff?

Better question: are you afraid of driving in Memphis, Detroit, or the South Side of Chicago?

Well, if you answered "yes" to the second question, know the reason those three places are so violent is courtesy of the continued funding of Poverty Inc.