African American community.
The police and African American community have gotten along swell since then.
Bill Clinton’s claim that 100,000 cops sent the crime rate ‘way down’
A bigger debate has taken place over whether the COPS program had much of an impact on the crime rate. The results vary depending on whether the research is done by a criminologist or an economist, or from within the government or outside of it. But overall the answer is “maybe—but only modestly.”
(snip)
The Pinocchio Test
The former president asserts too much cause and effect here. He did put (maybe) 100,000 police officers on the street; the crime rate did go way down. But COPS program was not the primary or even secondary factor in the dramatic reduction in crime during the 1990s –the precise reasons for which remain a mystery. (One analyst even has posited that the legalization of abortion in 1973 played an important but rarely understood role two decades later.)
We wavered between two and three Pinocchios, but ultimately settled on Three. While some studies have found a modest impact on the crime rate, Clinton’s statement clearly suggested the COPS program was the primary reason for the fact the crime rate “went way down.” He needs to be more careful about how he frames the impact.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2014/09/26/bill-clintons-claim-that-100000-cops-sent-the-crime-rate-way-down/
My own gut feeling about the crime rate drop and it's not mentioned in the WAPO article is that demographics also played a role as the nation got older with baby boomers aging.
Bill also supported three strikes and you're out legislation, this also had a positive effect on the African American community, I'm sure many are praising it to this day.
Clinton Hails 'Three Strikes' Sentence : Crime: He says federal life term proves worth of the bipartisan-backed crime bill. He urges similar support to adopt his anti-terrorism legislation.
(snip)
The President argued that Congress should summon the same bipartisan spirit responsible for passage of last year's crime bill to enact this year's anti-terrorism measure, welfare reform and other legislation backed by the White House.
(snip)
"Just a year ago this week we ended six years of partisan stalemate in Washington by pushing a tough, sweeping crime bill through the Congress. Narrow interest groups on the left and the right didn't want the bill to pass, and you can be sure the criminals didn't either," Clinton said. Law enforcement officials supported the measure, he said, "and so did I, because it puts the government firmly on the side of the people who abide by the law, not the criminals who break it."
http://articles.latimes.com/1995-08-20/news/mn-37177_1_federal-crime-bill
Welfare Reform in the 1996 election year also helped the African American Community and women, by "breaking the cycle of dependency" particulary that of single mothers although some people disagree with this.
In 1996, after constructing two welfare reform bills that were vetoed by President Clinton,[18] Gingrich and his supporters pushed for the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), a bill aimed at substantially reconstructing the welfare system. Introduced by Rep. E. Clay Shaw, Jr., the act gave state governments more autonomy over welfare delivery, while also reducing the federal government's responsibilities.
It started the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program, which placed time limits on welfare assistance and replaced the longstanding Aid to Families with Dependent Children program. Other changes to the welfare system included stricter conditions for food stamps eligibility, reductions in immigrant welfare assistance, and recipient work requirements.[19]
(snip)
President Clinton found the legislation more conservative than he would have preferred; however, having vetoed two earlier welfare proposals from the Republican-majority Congress, it was considered a political risk to veto a third bill during a campaign season with welfare reform as a central theme.[18] As he signed the bill on August 22, 1996, Clinton stated that the act "gives us a chance we haven't had before to break the cycle of dependency that has existed for millions and millions of our fellow citizens, exiling them from the world of work. It gives structure, meaning and dignity to most of our lives".[20]
(snip)
Frances Fox Piven said that the problem with AFDC was not a problem with the welfare system, but with low-wage work:
Logically, but not in the heated and vitriolic politics created by the attack on welfare, a concern with the relationship of welfare to dependency should have directed attention to the deteriorating conditions of the low-wage labor market. After all, if there were jobs that paid living wages, and if health care and child care were available, a great many women on AFDC would leap at the chance of a better income and a little social respect.[29]
Three assistant secretaries at the Department of Health and Human Services, Mary Jo Bane, Peter B. Edelman, and Wendell E. Primus, resigned to protest the law.[30] According to Edelman, the 1996 welfare reform law destroyed the safety net. It increased poverty, lowered income for single mothers, put people from welfare into homeless shelters, and left states free to eliminate welfare entirely. It moved mothers and children from welfare to work, but many of them are not making enough to survive. Many of them were pushed off welfare rolls because they didn't show up for an appointment, because they could not get to an appointment for lack of child care, said Edelman, or because they were not notified of the appointment.[31][32]
Feminist critics, such as Barbara Ehrenreich, said that PRWORA was motivated by racism and misogyny, using stereotypes of lazy, overweight, slovenly, sexually indulgent and "endlessly fecund" African-American welfare recipients. PRWORA assumed that out-of-wedlock births were "illegitimate" and that only a male could confer respectability on a child, said Ehrenrich. PRWORA dismissed the value of the unpaid work of raising a family, and insisted that mothers get paid work, "no matter how dangerous, abusive, or poorly paid".[33]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Responsibility_and_Work_Opportunity_Act
These are just a few examples with Bill and like minded Democrats reaching across the aisle to the Republicans in order to benefit the African American community.
Thanks for the thread, Bread and Circus.
= new reply since forum marked as read
