Valerie Jarrett: Bob Herbert is 'Simply Wrong'

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7. press secretary type? How insultingly condescending of you.

Ignore the substance of the efforts the lady outlined and just focus on demeaning her; and the President, as well.

Since you don't look to give a spit about the folks who were helped by the efforts of this administration, let's first deal with the insults that you think are so productive and enlightening.

Valerie Jarrett is not just some 'secretary, she's Senior Advisor to President Obama, Chair of the White House Council on Women and Girls and she oversees the Offices of Intergovernmental Affairs, Public Engagement, and Urban Affairs

If you can't respect that this woman deserves more respect than to be called a 'secretary-type,' perhaps you don't deserve to be taken seriously when you profess concern for people; for any reason.

I wonder if you would regard the senior male staff at the White House as 'secretary-types?' I'll bet not. This particular insult of yours works its wonder because women have traditionally been denigrated to avoid recognizing their achievements and accomplishments. You've followed true-to-form with your characterizations of this rare, female senior staffer and our nation's first black President.

No matter for the President, though. He's well-positioned to take the insults and the cynicism as a consequence of his position in government; and he does so with eloquence and grace. I really don't need to defend him against your petty put-downs.

I will say this, however . . .

This President inherited an economy that neither JFK or Johnson had to deal with, so it's a bit disingenuous to make a comparison. if you're talking about their notable efforts in Civil Rights and 'Great Society' programs and assistance, those are always going to be seen as transformational and dynamic, because they were enacted in a complete vacuum of federal government responsibility and action. It's rather easy to pick at the edges of the billions of dollars in aid and assistance that flows without interruption, save for the assaults of republicans and conservatives; save the defenses by Democrats in Congress and our Democratic President.

It's one thing to start from zero, as Johnson and Kennedy did; it's another to seek and obtain resources and money over and above the infrastructure of aid and assistance already in place from the federal and state governments.

That's what you and Herbert are griping over. Not a dearth of assistance; not enough, in your estimation. That's fair.

Claiming he didn't make his accomplishments in the face of 'stiff opposition,' though, is just sophistry of the highest order.

One of the nation's largest packages of aid and assistance to the nation's poor -- over and above the infrastructure of spending already in place -- was achieved in the initiation, passage, signing, and enactment by President Obama of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act included broad investments to alleviate the poverty made worse by the economic crisis.

To fight hunger, the Act includes a $20 billion increase for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as Food Stamps, as well as funding for food banks and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC);

The Act also provides for $2 billion in (continuing) new Neighborhood Stabilization Funds to help maintain ailing neighborhoods and $1.5 billion in Homelessness Prevention Funds to keep people in their homes or rapidly rehouse them;

The Act increases funding for the Community Services Block Grant by $1 billion;

The Act increases the Weatherization Assistance Program by $5 billion to help low income families save on their energy bills by making their homes more energy efficient;

The Act increases job training funds for those who need them most, with $3.95 billion in additional funding for the Workforce Investment system, which will support green job training, summer jobs for young people, and other opportunities;

The Act provides increased income support, including an increase of $25 per week for Unemployment Insurance recipients and incentives for states to expand unemployment insurance eligibility, as well as an extra $250 payment to Social Security and Supplemental Security Income beneficiaries and new resources for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program; and,

The Act provides tax breaks to working families through the Make Work Pay and Child Tax Credits. These changes reduce the marriage penalty and provide a larger credit for families with three or more children . . .


more:

Obama Anti-Poverty Programs Begin to Take Shape
The president's neighborhood-based anti-poverty initiatives will soon move into a second stage. But in an era of budget-cutting, Promise Neighborhoods and Choice Neighborhoods face a steep political challenge.

In his budget battles with Congress, President Obama has defended two new antipoverty programs, Choice Neighborhoods and Promise Neighborhoods, that both use an array of programs to fight poverty in small geographic areas.
Amid the partisan battles that erupted over this year's $3.4 trillion-dollar federal budget, few observers noticed the skirmish involving President Obama's anti-poverty programs. In their budget plan, House Republicans zeroed out all three parts of the president's Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative: the school-centered Promise Neighborhoods, the housing-focused Choice Neighborhoods and the law enforcement-oriented Byrne Criminal Justice Initiative.

While Byrne ended up unfunded, Promise and Choice survived with $30 million and $65 million apiece—far less than Obama requested but more than might have been expected in a political environment where concern for the poor is absent.

Obama began to chart his antipoverty approach in a 2007 campaign speech in which he praised the work of Geoffrey Canada and the Harlem Children's Zone, an effort launched in 1994 to provide comprehensive services to all residents of a low-income, 97-block area of central Harlem. About a decade into that effort, the HCZ launched the first of two charter schools that have become the hub of the entire Harlem project. Promise Neighborhoods is an effort to take that idea of school-generated neighborhood change and replicate it in other communities.

On the poverty front, that means that while the Department of Education has a lead role on Promise Neighborhoods, and HUD on Choice Neighborhoods, both programs might end up tapping into very broad—and very similar—sets of federal programs. Both Promise and Choice also put a premium on leveraging private investment to augment public dollars.

Last September, the DOE named 21 winners of Promise Neighborhoods planning grants (out of 339 applicants) of up to $500,000 each. Winners included a Boston Promise Neighborhood based around the 23,000-resident Dudley Street neighborhood, and a St. Paul, Minn., effort that will reach 250 blocks

Choice Neighborhoods is also at a nascent stage. Because some communities had, through HOPE VI and other mechanisms, already developed a local planning process to develop local initiatives, HUD offered two streams of Choice funding this year—planning grants, which 119 communities applied for and 17 won, and implementation grants, which 42 communities applied for, with six being asked to submit more detailed plans for a final round of consideration.

Obama has requested $150 million for Promise and $250 million for Choice in the fiscal 2012 budget. To date, Congress has given him nowhere near what he sought for either program; this year's Choice money is actually being carved out of a different budget line. What's more, Obama's proposed 2012 budget halves funding for the Community Services Block Grant, which funds vital anti-poverty projects at a scale Choice and Promise don't approach. More cuts will come if people averse to both deficits and tax hikes tighten their grip on Congress. As Lester points out, "The outcome of the next election will very significantly affect where this goes."<