On fighting poverty. Will states that
""In a speech shortly after Katrina, he (Edwards) rightly stressed the correlation of family disintegration--especially out-of-wedlock births--with many social pathologies associated with poverty. He said, 'It is wrong when all Americans see this happening and do nothing to stop it.'
Anyway, spending at least $6.6 trillion on poverty-related programs in the four decades since President Johnson declared the 'war on poverty' is not "nothing". In fact it has purchased a new paradigm of poverty.
Edwards has a 1930s paradigm of poverty. Poor people are like everyone else, they just lack certain goods and services (housing, transportation, training, etc.) that government knows how to deliver. Hence he calls for a higher minimum wage and job-creation programs. And because no Democrrat with national ambitions will dare to offend the teachers unions, he rejects school choice vouchers and says this: 'Give working parents who are poor housing vouchers so they have a choice to move into neighborhoods with better schools'....
The 1930s paradigm has been refuted by four decades of experience. The new paradigm is of behavior-driven poverty that results from individual's nonmaterial deficits. It results from a scarcity of certain habits and mores--punctuality, hygiene, industriousness, deferral of gratification, etc.--that are not developed in disorganized homes.""
Well, ditch the GI Bill, too, while you're at it Mr Will ! By the way, if you look at the monstrous Military Industrial Complex's paradigm since WWII, we have over $10 trillion being spent since the Johnson era (in 1982 dollars), scroll down to 'The Staggering Cost of Military Spending' at the article below and check the table
U.S. Military Spending In The Cold War Era:
Opportunity Costs, Foreign Crises, and Domestic Constraints
by Robert Higgs
http://www.cultofdanbrown.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php/Cat/0/Board/solomon/Number/7147/Main/6673#Post7147Mr Will's self-desigation as a 'master' of the subject of poverty belies his own circumstance as father of a child with Down's Syndrome, Jonathan:
http://www.nndb.com/people/285/000024213/Apparently he has managed, without any public assistance, to educate and care for his son, but would begrudge any public assistance to just any other in our society to obtain ANY governmental assistance, assuming they were economically deprived. Mr Will has found his 'niche' as a shill for conservative clap-trap, for which he is presumably well compensated. Let us hope we can all be so hypocritical. We now have the 'new paradigm' Mr Will really espouses.