[SamIam]

Originally Posted by Griff

Except that a lot of low income youth don't have any role models who work.

I'd be curious about just how much "a lot" is, and how one would measure the number of role models available to any given group of kids. Seriously.

Originally Posted by Griff

Finding a way to make working more profitable than not working seems a valid goal and Mitt worked for Bain not Newt.

Yeah, sorry about that. Sometimes my bizarre and tiny brain confuses such things.

It is my feeling that a number of different things will have to happen to a number of different groups before any real change occurs. The stereotype is that so long as drug dealing remains such a lucrative business, kids will choose to deal crack or meth or whatever over working for minimum wage at McDonald's.

The stereotype is that so long as certain Native American tribes make the decision to pay their members just for existing, some will choose to party their lives away. A job just gets in the way of a life of chronic alcoholism.

And so on...

But I think it’s a vast over-simplification to say that members of minority groups are merely shiftless substance abusers in need of role models.

We need to take a long, hard look at racism and the active role it continues to play in America today. I read a statistic somewhere which stated that one in three African American men between the ages of 18 and 30 have been in prison, or are in prison now, or will be in prison in the near future.

And if that’s not bad enough, look at the unemployment situation for black Americans NOT in prison. In December, black unemployment rose from 15.5 % to 15.8% overall and from 39.6 to 42.1 among African American teens.

Contrast these statistics to an overall unemployment rate of 8.5 percent for the same time period – an actual improvement even as the situation for black Americans worsened.

Hispanics did somewhat better at 12.5 percent unemployment.

And last, but certainly not least, here’s what’s happening with Native Alaskans and American Indians.

• By the first half of 2010, the unemployment rate for Alaska Natives jumped 6.3 percentage points to 21.3%—the highest regional unemployment rate for American Indians.

• Since the start of the recession, American Indians in the Midwest experienced the greatest increase in unemployment, growing by 10.3 percentage points to 19.3%.

• By the first half of this year, slightly more than half—51.5%—of American Indians nationally were working, down from 58.3% in the first half of 2007.

• In the first half of this year, only 44% of American Indians in the Northern Plains were working, the worst employment rate for Native Americans regionally.

• The employment situation is the worst for American Indians in some of the same regions where it is best for whites: Alaska and the Northern Plains.

Read more and weep here.


44 percent. 12.5 percent. 15.8 percent. 42.1 percent.

These statistics are outrageous. America should be ashamed. Instead we blame Hispanics, blacks, and Natives for not having “enough good role models” and proposing special work programs for them. No one asks if the children in these groups have the same access to a good education that the children in white suburbs have. We don’t talk about the food and nutritional needs of children living in poverty except to make cracks about obese “welfare queens.” God forbid that the “food stamp president” make decent meals available to the children of the poor. No one asks about the children whose families live in homeless shelters and how difficult it is for these “street kids” to make the same educational progress as a child who has a settled home to go to. And Newt forbid that we consider the medical care or lack there of available to children of the poor.

OK, I see this post is taking on TWesque proportions, so I’ll stop. I have only one more question. How are we going to pay for this proposed SOCIAL program of providing jobs for disadvantaged youth? You think the Tea Baggers are going to cowboy up and find a way to do it? Not hardly.

We have major, major problems facing our society. The Republican response is to simply cut all social programs and hold the hands of the rich. Newt’s or whoever’s proposal for jobs for kids is just so much more hot air.