Thank you Chuck! We are in agreement in yet another area. I've tried to
tell jps, that he's painting the situation with a racial brush, when he
should be thinking socio-economic.

Dave

Poor, non-white people will always be non-white. That's not a good, bad, or
indifferent thing, but it is a fact. No big deal, it would be boring if we all
looked alike and shared precisely the same family/cultural priorities.

Poor, non-white people don't need to remain *poor*. Where the injustice often
arises is when other elements of society attempt to dictate that they *must*
remain poor, and only because they are non-white.

Early childhood education, ( a la Head Start & similar programs), is a critical
element in breaking the multi-generational
cycle of impoverished thinking and behavior. This is an area where the RW just
doesn't get it: stripping the funding from programs that will influence kids to
take a productive course in life isn't saving the taxpayer's anything. Instead
of spending $6000 to send a kid to Head Start, we wind up spending $60,000 (a
year!) to incarcerate him or her as a failed adult. In some areas of the
country, up to
about a third of the adult men from poor neighborhoods are in prison at any one
time.

And it isn't strictly a racial thing, either.
The majority of white people serving time for violent crimes likely hail from
economic conditions similar to those that their minority cell mates do.

Even if the humanitarian argument falls on deaf ears, the anti-taxation crowd
ought to
try to realize that a $1000 in prevention is worth $100,000 in cure.