It was reported in The Baltimore Sun Wednesday May 12 2010 that the Environmental Protection Agency has come to an agreement with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation regarding the achievement of its mission to clean up the Chesapeake Bay. This agreement resulted from a law suit.
Similarly, such agencies as the Departments of Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, and Labor should be sued because of their incompetence in solving the systemic problems of impoverished communities. Each year, trillions of dollars are spent by multiple levels of government, nonprofit organizations and well-meaning individuals to help empower impoverished communities. Despite these massive expenditures, the incompetence and ineffectiveness of these efforts are self-evident as generations of persons continue to be locked in cycles of poverty, dependency, and entitlement.
Certainly, the clean-up of the bay is important, but what about the millions of persons who are locked in sub-standard housing, blighted communities, welfare, joblessness, dependency on government for social services, and all other types of issues which relate to the lack of economic empowerment?
I believe that the Department of Housing and Urban Development should be sued. It has wasted trillions of dollars over the years and has not achieved its mission. The rules and regulations of this and most agencies which deal with impoverished communities preclude and prevent creative solutions to the target population. The disdain of these agencies for the power of capital in the hands of entrepreneurs in these communities is legend.
The incompetence of the methods by which they attempt to solve the problem of economic empowerment is obvious, yet not easily perceived. The obvious thing is that economic solutions are held in complete disdain by those who presume that the generational poverty of these populations is based upon such issues as politics, crime, drug addiction and other social and psychological dysfunctions. Their thinking excludes economic interventions which will empower these communities through capital, recirculation of capital, businesses, and jobs.
The failure of the agencies that are supposed to be ending poverty is unconscionable. The burden that impoverished people place on the government in terms of the need for social services, welfare, medical etc is also unconscionable. Strategies should be developed to end poverty by introducing into blighted areas programs that provide effective economic systems which increase the multipliers of indigenous economic activity such as businesses, jobs, apprenticeships, capital, income recirculation, home ownership, job accessibility etc
This type of effort will replace the social work mentality that has been taken toward inner city community development. It will begin to generate pay-offs that will eliminate the need for continued government deficits by replacing social welfare with economic opportunity. Instead of dependency on government, millions of people will gain access and participation in a capitalistic economy.
We should sue Housing and Urban Development, and all of the government infrastructure that thrive on the perpetuation of poverty. Not only do they continue to fail to change the underlying conditions of poverty, but they grow geometrically while the conditions for which they were purposed become worse and worse. Absent the empowerment of capital, dependency will multiply; bureaucracy will grow; and budgets will increase geometrically. It’s time to end this incompetence and waste. GIVE IMPOVERISHED COMMUNITIES A CHANCE AT ECONOMIC SELF-SUFFICIENCY. This will be good for them and our economy as well.
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