Loosing the War

This article that was posted recently from CNN.com http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/19/opinion/zelizer-war-on-poverty/index.html is troubling for a lot of reasons. It talks about how poverty levels have reach their lowest point since 1993. Yeah, that's probably not big new to whoever is reading this but this made me more start think about how we got here and where we will be as opposed to the current state of it. Former President Johnson declared his war on poverty once upon a time and over time it looked like we might win one day. Unfortunately before the "safety net" could reach its full potential a series of republican presidents in office declared defeat in the war on poverty. Whether it was because it took too long, cost too much, or if the Republicans wanted to call it quits because they've never had the best relationship with social programs to begin with, they threw in the towel and let the poverty rates begin to rise again. If you couple that with years of Cold War military spending, ineffective leadership, Regan's move during his time in office to close down as many mental institutions as he did, which swelled the numbers of homeless to record amounts, more than a decade of poor financial planning, and you have a set up for our current situation. What worries me most is that after eight years of George Bush Jr. we as a nation got bored with Obama inside of one term and are on the verge of electing a new Conservative president. Obama hasn't done as much as we like for the homeless and hungry but would Michelle Bachmen or Rick Perry with their history of ultra conservatism be any better? I'll answer that with a "no". I'll answer even further with a "What are you crazy? Of course they wouldn't. Their party's main idea to cut spending and balance our county's budget is to take an axe to every social program like medicare that they can and broaden the tax base by increasing taxes on the bottom fifty percent of people earning income in this nation, while simlutaneously dropping as many people form well fare as they can."