Onze site gebruikt cookies om diensten te leveren, prestaties te verbeteren, voor analyse en (indien je niet ingelogd bent) voor advertenties. Door LibraryThing te gebruiken erken je dat je onze Servicevoorwaarden en Privacybeleid gelezen en begrepen hebt. Je gebruik van de site en diensten is onderhevig aan dit beleid en deze voorwaarden.
"Bill Clinton vowed to "end welfare as we know it" in his first run for president in 1992. Four years later, Congress translated a catchy slogan into a law that sent 9 million women and children streaming from the rolls. Did it work? In his book on the historic upheaval in the American social contract, New York Times reporter and two-time Pulitzer finalist Jason DeParle follows three women in one extended family to a set of surprising answers." "Cutting between Washington and the streets of Milwaukee, DeParle follows the story from the White House to the local crack house." "DeParle travels between the politicians who wrote the bill and the poor people who lived it. He spent seven years tracking an unforgettable set of characters caught in its wake. Angela Jobe, Jewell Reed, and Opal Caples - cousins, yet closer than sisters - arrive in Milwaukee just as the city becomes the epicenter of the antiwelfare crusade. Their responses vex the expectations of the political left and right. After a dozen years on welfare, Angie thrives as a worker, with a car, two jobs, and a 401(k) - yet her children struggle in school, and her boyfriend tries to shoot her. Jewell, glamorous even in sweatpants, isn't focused on work; what she cares about are her kids and the imprisoned man she wants to marry. Opal combines an antic wit with an appetite for cocaine, while the for-profit welfare agency handling her case squanders the taxpayers' millions. Tracing the story back six generations to a common ancestor - a Mississippi slave - DeParle adds intellectuals, caseworkers, reformers, and rogues to a tale of adversity variously overcome, compounded, or merely endured."--Jacket.… (meer)
I very much appreciate the perspective that DeParle brings to this project. He is able to write about the overarching political environment that brought about the pledge to "end welfare as we know it" and to recount the experiences of the three women in the subtitle to show that there are no simple answers and there are no simple categories to dump people into. DeParle eloquently evokes the flexibility and resourcefulness of the women of whom he writes and of their victories, even as their limitations, often seemingly self-imposed, work against them.
Long after I first read this book and started recommending it to people, I saw DeParle mentioned in one of Sr. Helen Prejean's books as a sympathetic journalist. His is a fine pedigree, looking into issues that most people want to sweep under the rug. ( )
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
I think all of us know in our heart of hearts America's biggest problem today is that too many of our people never got a shot at the American dream. - Bill Clinton, February 2, 1993
I am born of black color Descendants of slaves, Who worked and cried so I can see better days Who fought and ran So I can be free to see better days. Better days are here, so they say So why am I still working, running, fighting and crying? For my better days? Or is it so my descendants can know of the work I'm putting in For their better days? - Angela Jobe, 2003
Opdracht
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
To Nancy-Ann, Nicholas, and Zachary
Eerste woorden
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
Bruce Reed needed a better line. A little-known speechwriter in a long-shot campaign, he was trapped in the office on a Saturday afternoon, staring at a flat phrase. A few weeks earlier, his boss, Bill Clinton, had stood on the steps of the Arkansas Capitol to announced he was running for president. "We should insist that people move off the welfare rolls and onto the work rolls," he said. It wasn't the kind of thing most Democrats said, which was one reason Reed liked it; he thought the party carried too much liberal baggage, especially in its defense of the dole. But the phrase wasn't particularly memorable, either. With Clinton planning a big speech at Georgetown University, Reed tried again. -Chapter One, The Pledge: Washington and Milwaukee, 1991
Citaten
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
Years later, as Congress debated the welfare bill, its proponents talked about work in transcendent terms, as a source of dignity, order, and hope. But the first thing Hattie Mae noticed about work was the unfairness of it all: "All the black people was out working for nothing." p. 31
One thing to notice about Hattie Mae and welfare is that the check gave her new powers. Rather than promote "dependency", which was later seen as a major failing, its effect was the opposite: it gave her a degree of independence she had never known. To begin with, it reduced her reliance on men, so it decreased the predatory violence in her life. It also boosted her leverage in a rigged labor market designed for exploitation. pp. 35-36
One way to look at the billions in cuts is as what happens when a party controlled by southern white men gains power over a program that disproportionally aids black and Hispanic women. p. 133
Laatste woorden
Ontwarringsbericht
Uitgevers redacteuren
Auteur van flaptekst/aanprijzing
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
"Bill Clinton vowed to "end welfare as we know it" in his first run for president in 1992. Four years later, Congress translated a catchy slogan into a law that sent 9 million women and children streaming from the rolls. Did it work? In his book on the historic upheaval in the American social contract, New York Times reporter and two-time Pulitzer finalist Jason DeParle follows three women in one extended family to a set of surprising answers." "Cutting between Washington and the streets of Milwaukee, DeParle follows the story from the White House to the local crack house." "DeParle travels between the politicians who wrote the bill and the poor people who lived it. He spent seven years tracking an unforgettable set of characters caught in its wake. Angela Jobe, Jewell Reed, and Opal Caples - cousins, yet closer than sisters - arrive in Milwaukee just as the city becomes the epicenter of the antiwelfare crusade. Their responses vex the expectations of the political left and right. After a dozen years on welfare, Angie thrives as a worker, with a car, two jobs, and a 401(k) - yet her children struggle in school, and her boyfriend tries to shoot her. Jewell, glamorous even in sweatpants, isn't focused on work; what she cares about are her kids and the imprisoned man she wants to marry. Opal combines an antic wit with an appetite for cocaine, while the for-profit welfare agency handling her case squanders the taxpayers' millions. Tracing the story back six generations to a common ancestor - a Mississippi slave - DeParle adds intellectuals, caseworkers, reformers, and rogues to a tale of adversity variously overcome, compounded, or merely endured."--Jacket.
)
)
)
Google Books — Bezig met laden...
8