America's Lazy Working Poor

Unknown to the American public at large, most especially those who are too young to remember, President Lyndon Johnson declared a war on poverty during his State Of The Union address on January 8th, 1964. His vision and plan for a great new society, one that treated all of the citizens of the United States with a sense of fairness and an opportunity for all to move upward on the economic ladder was swiftly undermined by the up and coming neo-con faction. A faction that has slowly and insidiously worked to destroy America's enjoyment of a better life for all save the wealthy.

The first of the great neo-con Presidents, Richard Nixon, showed his disdain for the poor by placing in charge of the then Office Of Economic Opportunity, none other than disgraced former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld administered the OEO by doing away with many of the programs served under the umbrella department, ultimately helping to lead to the disbanding of the agency altogether. Letting the fox guard the hen house, as it were. Even worse, after Jimmy Carter, the country has been hoodwinked into voting for the Nixon team time and again, beginning with the 1980 election.

The 'Greatest American Ever', President Ronald Reagan made clear where he stood when it came to issues of poverty and homelessness by decimating social programs literally right after he took the oath of office. Ordering a blanket turn down for every single person that applied for federal S.S.I., it now takes the disabled up to three years to receive benefits to which they are entitled. Also signing the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, the legislation was designed to make it harder for states to receive federal tax money to fund their social programs, but this wasn't enough for the Cold Warrior. He and his administration were the ones to come up with using the tax code to redistribute America's wealth from the poor and the middle class to the rich. By using his long debunked 'trickle down economic theory', he could claim that the rich, if they had more money, would help the poor, and therefore there was no longer a need to fund all of these programs designed to help the poor stay alive.

We could also examine Bill Clinton's selling out of the American middle class and the poor with his 1996 'welfare reform'. Nothing more than an election year gimmick, it has since caused at least 2.2 million Americans to end up homeless. Fast forward to the extreme defunding

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