An article in today's New York Times reports on time limits and welfare reform. "States can relax deadlines quite freely because the welfare law permits caseload exemptions of up to 20 percent due to various hardships," the Times reports. "Because of the strong economy of the 1990's and the abundance of jobs then, far fewer than 20 percent of recipients have stayed on welfare for five years and therefore are not approaching a deadline." (The end of that last sentence is hard to understand, but what it seems to be trying to convey is that far fewer than 20 percent of welfare recipients are now approaching a deadline.)
The Times article continues, "That means that unless unemployment rises sharply, states say they can grant exemptions at the current pace and not reach the 20 percent for two or three years. By then, proponents of the welfare law say, the economy should be generating jobs again and leaving few people exposed to deadlines."
The Times news article is asserting that welfare caseload is related to unemployment levels and the strength or weakness or the economy. In fact, evidence for that relation is weak, if it exists at all. A chart, in PDF format, http://www.house.gov/budget/hearings/haskinscharts.pdf , shows the number of families in the U.S. receiving welfare from 1959 to 2000. During the economic boom of the 1980s, the welfare rolls remained steady. And if you look at the situation on a state-by-state basis, as Robert Rector and Sarah Youssef did in a 1999 Heritage Foundation study ( http://www.heritage.org/library/cda/cda99-04.html ), the results are even more clear. Mr. Rector and Ms. Youssef write, "We find that differences in state welfare policies -- specifically stringent sanctions and immediate work requirements -- are highly associated with rapid rates of caseload decline. By contrast, the relative vigor of state economies, as measured by unemployment rates, has no statistically significant effect on caseload decline. Indeed, states with higher caseload reductions, on average, had slightly higher unemployment rates."
Most Influential: An op-ed in today's New York Times claims, "the fact remains that Pat Robertson has been the most influential figure in American politics in the past decade." That's a preposterous claim. There are probably dozens of more powerful figures -- from Ronald Reagan, whose legacy still dominates much of American politics, to Bill Clinton, who actually won two elections and who, for all his flaws, played an important role in moving the Democratic Party toward the center on issues such as welfare reform and trade. The op-ed piece claims, "George W. Bush is president today because the religious right vetoed the nomination of John McCain." But there are plenty of reasons other than the religious right that Mr. Bush prevailed over Mr. McCain. The business wing of the Republican Party pumped more money into the Bush campaign than it did into Mr. McCain's, for instance. The tax-cutters in the Republican Party liked Mr. Bush's bigger tax cut better than they liked Mr. McCain's smaller tax cut. And the libertarians in the Republican Party didn't like Mr. McCain's restrictions on free speech touted as campaign finance "reform." The op-ed goes on to claim that Mr. Bush's "bioethics commission is headed by the religious right's favorite intellectual, Leon Kass." Mr. Kass writes for The New Republic, hardly a bastion of the Pat Robertson religious right. And he's hardly the religious right's "favorite" intellectual -- Richard John Neuhaus and William F. Buckley both probably rank higher on the list, as do George Will, William Bennett and Robert Bork.
Wrenching Choices: An article in the Week in Review section of today's New York Times writes of Yasser Arafat, "Nor is it possible to belittle the wrenching choices he has made in recognizing Israel, signing the Oslo agreements, giving up the Palestinian national charter and accepting a fifth of mandated Palestine as his future state." It sure is possible to belittle those choices. To demonstrate that it is possible, Smartertimes.com will now do it. While the Times claims Mr. Arafat has recognized Israel, in fact Mr. Arafat speaks openly about a staged plan that will eventually lead to Israel's destruction. His own maps and even the PLO's logo don't include Israel but do depict a Palestinian state from the Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea. The Times claims that Mr. Arafat has given up the Palestinian national charter but in fact the charter, which calls for Israel's destruction, appears to this day on numerous PLO Web sites. The PLO held a for-show vote in which it was supposedly decided to amend the charter, but the newly amended charter has never been published or distributed or adopted by the PLO. Finally, most wrenching of all is the Times's claim that Mr. Arafat has made a wrenching choice in "accepting a fifth of mandated Palestine as his future state." Mr. Arafat has accepted no such thing. When Mr. Arafat was offered a state with such borders by Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak at Camp David, he rejected it. Even if he had accepted it, there is no evidence that it would have been anything more than an interim stage in a long-term plan to destroy and conquer Israel. Moreover, the British in the Balfour Declaration and the U.N. in its partition never contemplated giving the Palestinian Arabs all of the mandatory lands. When did the Times ever praise the Jews for accepting "less than a third of mandated Palestine" as their state? Remember, the Arab state now called Jordan was part of mandatory Palestine, as well.
See, it was possible.
Note: Smartertimes.com is traveling this morning and operating from the New York Times on the Web.