Hickenlooper Goes "Cloward-Piven!"

13 Comments

by: Colorado Pols

As the Pueblo Chieftain’s Patrick Malone reports:

Gov. John Hickenlooper and human services officials on Monday announced a simplified application process for safety net programs aimed at enrolling more Coloradans who qualify for them.

“To be able to more easily get people into the services they need rather than doing a whole bunch of red tape and paperwork means they have more time to train themselves, more time to go out and find a job and get back to work,” Hickenlooper said…

It is already available on the Internet in all 64 counties and screens applicants for eligibility to receive a gamut of local, state and federal assistance programs whenever they apply for any individual service…[t]he potential exists to double the number of people enrolled in food assistance programs, according to DHS. More than 184,000 people were eligible for Medicaid but were not enrolled as of 2009, when the Colorado Health Institute last assessed enrollment and eligibility. That report showed that one in five Coloradans eligible for Medicaid were not enrolled.

For those of you who didn’t catch our reference in the title, the so-called “Cloward-Piven” theory is a favorite topic of right-wing television and radio commentator Glenn Beck. Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven were 60s-era lefty college professors who believed, not incorrectly, that a large number of Americans eligible for public assistance were not applying for it–thus concealing the extent of real poverty. In 1965 they wrote a paper asserting that if this gap were closed, it would lead to a systemic crisis and major reforms. We don’t know anyone in government who actually uses this obscure theorizing as a basis for making policy, and the truth is, we had never even heard of Cloward or Piven until Glenn Beck made them famous.

Their methods worked … for a while. From 1965 through 1974, due to the strategy and efforts of Cloward and Piven and their followers, the total recipients on welfare rocketed from 4.3 million to 10.8 million.

It’s important to understand this background before you read the response from state Sen. Kevin Lundberg–the chances that Lundberg is unfamiliar with the “Cloward-Piven Strategy” as described by Glenn Beck in menacing tones are approximately zero.

Sen. Kevin Lundberg, R-Berthoud, said the new approach to qualifying applicants for benefits could leave the already cash-strapped state in an even deeper financial lurch.

“Why are we begging people to come on to the entitlement programs?” he said. [Pols emphasis] “If there’s a legitimate entitlement program out there, it should be available across the board to every citizen in the state of Colorado that qualifies, but I do wonder why we work so hard to make sure that everybody gets all they can from the government. It seems counterproductive to our desire to try to keep costs under control.”

The implied suggestion here that the state should not make public assistance programs easy to access–note we’re not talking about easier eligibility, just easier access–is kind of ugly, and worthy of contempt all by itself. But the real problem could be that Lundberg has stumbled on to Hickenlooper’s secret plan to flood the public assistance rolls with poor people, overwhelm the system, and plunge the state of Colorado into socialist revolution!

If you think our linking Lundberg to Beck’s “Cloward-Piven Strategy” ravings is unfair, we’d ask you to examine Lundberg’s lengthy raving record. Or why Beck’s employee David Harsanyi is still featured in the Denver Post. Thanks to Glenn Beck, this is what millions of people immediately think, the moment somebody like Gov. Hickenlooper announces any such plan to streamline access to public assistance. If anything, “pro-business” Hickenlooper doing this throws these ravings into even sharper relief–as if Lundberg as the point man wasn’t enough.

How’s this? If Sen. Lundberg disavows Glenn Beck’s conspiracy theory as a reason to oppose Hickenlooper’s plan to simplify access to public assistance programs, we’ll apologize.

We don’t expect to apologize.

13 thoughts on “Hickenlooper Goes “Cloward-Piven!””

Sir Robin says:

November 22, 2011 at 8:04 pm

In an article at Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi contrasts the story of a woman who committed food stamp fraud and recieved a harsh penalty with the fraudsters of Wall Street, who, at worst, got slaps on the wrist for their crimes. Taibbi explains:

Last week, a federal judge in Mississippi sentenced a mother of two named Anita McLemore to three years in federal prison for lying on a government application in order to obtain food stamps.

Apparently in this country you become ineligible to eat if you have a record of criminal drug offenses. States have the option of opting out of that federal ban, but Mississippi is not one of those states. Since McLemore had four drug convictions in her past, she was ineligible to receive food stamps, so she lied about her past in order to feed her two children.

The total “cost” of her fraud was $4,367. She has paid the money back. But paying the money back was not enough for federal Judge Henry Wingate.

Wingate had the option of sentencing McLemore according to federal guidelines, which would have left her with a term of two months to eight months, followed by probation. Not good enough! Wingate was so outraged by McLemore’s fraud that he decided to serve her up the deluxe vacation, using another federal statute that permitted him to give her up to five years.

He ultimately gave her three years, saying, “The defendant’s criminal record is simply abominable …. She has been the beneficiary of government generosity in state court.”

Compare this court decision to the fraud settlements on Wall Street. Like McLemore, fraud defendants like Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Deutsche Bank have “been the beneficiary of government generosity.” Goldman got $12.9 billion just through the AIG bailout. Citigroup got $45 billion, plus hundreds of billions in government guarantees.

All of these companies have been repeatedly dragged into court for fraud, and not one individual defendant has ever been forced to give back anything like a significant portion of his ill-gotten gains. The closest we’ve come is in a fraud case involving Citi, in which a pair of executives, Gary Crittenden and Arthur Tildesley, were fined the token amounts of $100,000 and $80,000, respectively, for lying to shareholders about the extent of Citi’s debt.

Neither man was forced to admit to intentional fraud. Both got to keep their jobs.

Anita McLemore, meanwhile, lied to feed her children, gave back every penny of her “fraud” when she got caught, and is now going to do three years in prison. Explain that, Eric Holder!

What’s next? Execution for the poor?

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1. nancycronk says:
  
  November 22, 2011 at 8:20 pm
  
  “When the government enforces laws against white collar crime as much as they do laws against camping in parks, our country will once more be great.”
  
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MADCO says:

November 22, 2011 at 8:09 pm

is we (Colorado) should have a conversation about eligibility before and after we simplify the application process.

See

Where can I get an application form for financial assistance programs?

Click here for the State’s single-purpose application for all programs.

Want to see the “single source application” currently in use?

Colorado

The Official State Wed Portal

Home

Error Page 404

We are sorry about the inconvenience.

The Web page you have requested could not be located on our server.

Return to http://www.colorado.gov or go back to the previous page.

No risk here of anyone, eligible or not, signing up for anything. Or finding out whether or not they are eligible.

I’m sure, the reason is that the Cadillac driving, public housing resident, steak buying food stamp queen has sucked the program dry.

Except she doesn’t exist.

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redstateblues says:

November 22, 2011 at 8:14 pm

from arapagop in 3… 2… 1…

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1. ArapaGOP says:
  
  November 22, 2011 at 8:18 pm
  
  I’ve been busy lately but I’m a sucker for being called out. Mocking critics who come close to the mark is textbook Alinsky.
  
  Cue official Democrat spin in 3… 2… 1…
  
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  1. redstateblues says:
    
    November 22, 2011 at 9:00 pm
    
    thanks for fulfilling my prediction.
    
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2. ArapaGOP says:
  
  November 22, 2011 at 8:18 pm
  
  I’ve been busy lately but I’m a sucker for being called out. Mocking critics who come close to the mark is textbook Alinsky.
  
  Cue official Democrat spin in 3… 2… 1…
  
  Log in to Reply
  1. ArapaGOP says:
    
    November 22, 2011 at 8:19 pm
    
    Spare the mockery, this has happened to all of you.
    
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    1. Diogenesdemar says:
      
      November 22, 2011 at 8:51 pm
      
      Besides, who needs this when you’re already such a plump and juicy target for bounteous (. . . ’tis the season) mockery every otherwise?
      
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nancycronk says:

November 22, 2011 at 8:18 pm

I did an informal, unscientific poll on my facebook page last week, asking how people felt about John Hickenlooper’s performance after almost a year of being in office, and had 105 responses from Coloradans. The responses were overwhelmingly negative. Most thought he does not communicate his values well, and many were furious about how little regard he seems to have for the Occupy movement. Many referred to him as a Republican in Democrat’s clothing who only cares for the business world. I won’t even go into the private messages I received.

Hickenlooper is the most moderate Democrat I can remember in Colorado in a very long time. I think his biggest problem is communicating that he cares about the Democrats that worked hard to elect him. I think his PR is horrible. I suspect he will be primaried, and you don’t have to go far to figure out who people will beg to do that.

I ran into a Governor’s office staffer at Jessie Ulibarri’s event. She was a good listener, and a great representative for his office, however, I was very concerned that she was unaware of the things I shared with her. It appears Hickenlooper is in a sound-proof political bubble. She had no idea many Dems were unhappy with him. I was dumbstruck, really. I think she needs to go down and spend some time at Occupy Denver, hang out on the blogs, or at least check out my facebook page. Word on the street is not good for our beer-brewing Governor.

I am eternally hopeful he can change, and he will break through the bubble to get to know ordinary Coloradans and what they are concerned about. Those who worked closely with him said the others were being unfair, and he does have compassionate values. Maybe they are right… Then again, he’s no Senator Carroll.

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Diogenesdemar says:

November 22, 2011 at 8:57 pm

the Grand Old unification theory (of Party). . . it goes a long way towards explaining the GOP push for voter suppresion.

When you’re morally and intellectually bankrupt, about the only tool you have left to retaining your power is to supression of freedom and access and knowledge.

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1. caroman says:
  
  November 23, 2011 at 12:15 am
  
  This sounds a lot like the GOP theory on voting. “Why should we be begging people to” vote? “I do wonder why we work so hard to try to get everybody” to vote? I mean, only people of quality should vote or get the services they qualify for.
  
  Right, GOoP?
  
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gaf says:

November 23, 2011 at 9:12 am

as it might come from Lundberg types:

“Why are we begging people to vote? If there’s a legitimate voting program out there, it should be available across the board to every citizen in the state of Colorado that qualifies, but I do wonder why we work so hard to make sure that everybody gets to vote. It seems counterproductive to our desire to try to keep votes under control.”

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