About the shooting at the MTA downtown bus terminal

Gun control advocates such as Mayor Barry have not let the opportunity to blame the downtown shooting at the MTA bus terminal on guns, saying the incident is a"tragic reminder of the plague of gun violence in our society." The gun did not fire itself'; someone had to pick it up and pull the trigger.

I think the shooting at the MTA bus terminal is a reminder of the consequences of the welfare state which produced a generation of alienated kids born to unwed mothers.  This is what happens when we promote policies that destroy the family. We can each draw our own "reminder" but in any case we can agree that what happened is a tragedy.

If one thinks the problem is unwed mothers and the welfare stare or it one thinks it is guns, there is no short-term solution to either problem. Even if we agreed on the problem, the solution would be long-term. We cannot however wait long-term and we cannot pretend the problem is not real.  A report on the problem of youth violence in Nashville states that over the past five years, 16,955 violent incidents in Nashville involved youth. Last year, among the country's 50 largest cities, Nashville ranked second in the highest percentage increase in homicides — from 41 in 2014 to 78 in 2015. Of those, 55 percent of the perpetrators were 25 years old or younger, and half those killed were younger than 25. African-American males are disproportionately involved in the crimes,  both in terms of victims and those arrested.

The report refers to youth violence as an “epidemic” with a range of root causes: joblessness and poverty; poor educational opportunities; a lack of adult role models; barriers to re-entry for those who have been incarcerated; and a cycle of trauma and violence. (link)

Barry has proposed a series of steps to address the issue of youth violence.  "By 2017, I want 10,000 of our youth to have an engaged opportunity that includes a paid internship," Barry has said (link). I don't know that this or any other part of her plan will make a difference, but it might and I hope it does.  Maybe if a kid born in poverty to a single mother has a job they will, if only for that crucial period of their teen years, have hope and maybe they will have influences other than their peers who are urging them to deal dope and commit robberies.

I don't think government can replace the function of that most basic building block of society, the family. I don't think government can build character and instill values that the family should be doing,  but in looking for short-term solutions maybe providing internship to youth will help. I think we could get more impact by rapidly expanding charter schools.  Charter schools have had remarkable success in producing successful college-bound graduates where that demographic would predict school drop outs and criminals.

Maybe, also increasing policing would help and paying for youth informants would help. I don't know the solution but think a multi-prong approach which includes charter schools is what is needed. I agree we should be doing something. 

One thing the mayor is doing that I think is actually counter productive is hosting a "Stand Against Racism" rally. She should not be fanning the flames of racial animosity and telling Black young people that they are victims. The mayor should cancel the "Stand Against Racism" rally and host a "Stand Against Violence" rally.


 Below is more on the recent shooting at the MTA bus terminal.

It could have been my kids. 

 Press Release Jackson Miller- There was a shooting this afternoon at the downtown bus station. It happened at a time when many Nashville students transfer from the MTA bus that picked them up from school... onto the MTA bus that will take them home. I know, because 3 of my sons were there.

They're there everyday, at that time... Many kids are. Thankfully, my sons are ok. Public school students ride MTA for free each day thanks to a program called STRIDE. I advocated hard for this program as a member of the Education Report Card Committee. It is an important program that gives Nashville's kids an opportunity to attend the school they choose. It is critical to participation in after-school programs -- especially for kids with working parents. I am still a strong believer in the STRIDE program, and will continue to advocate for it.

I also recognize why riding MTA is a tough option for many families. Several parents have told me that they are uncomfortable with their kids riding MTA busses, and today we see why that is a valid concern.


As I hug my family a little tighter tonight, I can't help but think of two takeaways from today's events: Parents weigh many costs when choosing where to send their child to school. We need great schools in every neighborhood.

Rod, even if you did not have a child at the bus station today... if you're getting this email -- I know this story will impact you. This story is why I am running for school board. I know we can make a difference and I know that together we can give EVERY neighborhood a great school to be proud of. For students,

Barry Statement on Shooting at Music City Central

Metro Press Release, NASHVILLE, Tenn. (April 25, 2016) – Mayor Megan Barry has released the following statement regarding the shooting at MTA’s Music City Central station that has resulted in four shooting victims, one with critical injuries:

The shooting today at Music City Central is a tragic reminder of the plague of gun violence in our society, where one person with a gun can devastate lives and bring a city to a halt in a moment’s notice. My heart sank when I heard that youth were the victims in this shooting, and my hope and prayer for those victims and their families is that they have a full and speedy recovery.
Metro Police will be assigning additional officers to the terminal in the coming days, and as a clearer picture of the shooting today comes into view, I will be meeting with Police and MTA officials to see what we can do better to improve security at Music City Central and prevent incidents like this in the future.
As Mayor, as a Nashvillian, and as a mother, I will never accept a status quo where our children fear being victims of violence when getting on a bus, going to school, or walking in their neighborhoods. I remain committed to working with our entire community to implement recommendations from the Youth Violence Summit Report and create better outcomes for all of our children.

Metro Police will continue to update the public and media with details related to the shooting as they are made available.

Metro Police continue search for teen accused of bus station shooting

Wednesday, April 27 - 10:32 PM WZTV FOX Nashville - Jade McMath says police came armed for trouble Tuesday when they arrived at the home two doors down from hers in north Davidson County.All of a sudden you saw four or five cars...

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The argument for an objective moral order

by Gene Wisdom

 In the aftermath of the 2012 election, and even before, we heard many pundits telling us that social conservatives are dragging down the Republican Party. Establishment Republicans (read “professional Republicans”), RINO’s and even some other conservatives argue that conservatives driven by social issues are holding back the GOP and diminishing its potential outreach among the young—and that we’re causing GOP election losses. We’re pointed to polls we are told that show that public opinion is now in favor of acceptance of same-sex marriage and told to get on board with young people who are more “tolerant”.

First of all, it strikes me as odd that the party which brought in Abraham Lincoln in the wake of the Dred Scott decision would now want to push itself away from moral issues. Slavery is a moral issue. Personhood is a moral issue. And they are issues in which the state should be deeply involved. Abandoning the moral issues is an acceptance of James Carville’s “It’s the economy, stupid.” In so doing we concede the Democratic/liberal position that marriage doesn’t matter, that abortion doesn’t matter, and that what our children are taught in school doesn’t matter. They do matter and government has a legitimate role in ensuring that these values aren’t attacked. Government has an interest in the stability of society which is strengthened by traditional marriage between one man and one woman and in facilitating its permanence. It is also government’s duty to protect human life. Before liberty and the pursuit of happiness, both as a duty recognized in the Declaration of Independence and as a matter of reason, there is life. And government, through public schools, weakens families and social order by allowing traits such as honor, faith, and patriotism to be attacked in our classrooms.

Surrendering will most certainly have an impact on the direction and health of our society. By taking social issues off the Republican electoral agenda we will have effectively surrendered the legislative agenda to the Democrats. If Republicans aren’t willing to take a stand on the campaign trail will we, should we, expect them to take a stand on those issues in our legislative chambers and yes, in our courtrooms. And they are foolish who do not accept a certain level of inevitability (yes, slippery slope) to the direction our nation is headed. We would not have the debate over partial birth abortion (nor the horrors of the recent Gosnell case in Pennsylvania) without Roe v. Wade. Justice Scalia warned in his dissent in the Texas sodomy case (Lawrence v. Texas, 2003) not to believe the majority opinion when they said that it would not lead to same-sex marriage and was proven correct when that decision was later cited in the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision which first legalized same-sex marriage. He also warned us in the recent same-sex marriage U.S. Supreme Court case, United States v. Windsor not to believe the majority when they said it would not lead to striking down state laws protecting traditional marriage. This is not to say these things can’t be turned around but they certainly won’t be if their importance is ignored or belittled.

By backing down on these issues, it doesn’t mean that there is not a moral position. It means simply that we surrender to an opposite moral position, that of moral relativism and nihilism. The vacuum created by our silence (both as social conservatives and as conservative Republicans) will be filled by those with a much different agenda. Not only nature, but politics too, abhors a vacuum. Does anyone really believe that Republican silence on these issues, that locking out social conservatives from the Republican Party will not hasten these destructive social trends? Silence about social issues and these values is rejection of these values, in favor of a system of morality which has weakened our nation.

And its economy. These issues overlap with economic issues. Redistribution of income is really bad economics but why is it bad economics? Sure, there are the disincentives to work and the misallocation of resources. But the disincentive to work means that people lose the incentive to work to provide for their families, for fathers to remain with their families, to be fathers and teachers to their children. Is this a benign outcome? Of course not--even redistributionist-in-chief Barack Obama has stated that fathers are essential. And when fathers aren’t there, children are much more likely to grow up to become criminals, to go to prison, to use drugs, to become pregnant teenagers. Families break down. Senator Rick Santorum, writing in It Takes a Family reminded us that “[W]elfare enabled out of wedlock childbirth (because the financial and, over time, social consequences—i.e., shame—were not as devastating) and, conversely, made marriage unnecessary.” Daniel Moynihan, often described as a neo-conservative, warned us of these consequences to the black family in the 1960’s. Economic issues also become social issues.

Surrender on moral legislative issues is a tacit declaration that there is no objective moral order and effectively that government has no role in fostering integrity, character, honor, honesty. It is true government officials do a poor job of living up to those standards (and so do we all as human beings; it is the human condition) but the fact that they violate them doesn’t mean they don’t exist and that those standards should not be advanced. Have conservatives, and by extension the Republican Party, so lost touch with our intellectual forbears as to forget warnings such as that from Richard Weaver that our society “approach[es] a condition in which we shall be amoral without the capacity to perceive it and degraded without the means to measure our descent.” Are we only to offer a measuring stick, if that, for our decline. If Republicans look to ditch social conservatives they will lose even that barometer and will face only the storms. Wearing blinders to these issues will not make them go away, it will simply say “We don’t care.” And perhaps some don’t. It is they who are more fit for another party, that of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. And Anthony Weiner.

Republicans need to ask themselves, if they are ready to abandon those issues, whether they will stand up
to protect the free speech rights and religious liberties of social conservatives on them. There are many cases around the country where Americans have taken a stand against same-sex marriage and have then come under fire, lost jobs, been sued and charged by state/local “human rights commissions”. This is the real meaning of liberal “tolerance”. Is the Republican Party going to look the other way? Catholic charities were denied participation in Massachusetts adoption programs because they refused, due to religious principles, to place children with same-sex couples. People have been sued for not wishing to provide services such as photography for same-sex weddings. The Left is not looking for tolerance, they seek to impose uniformity. And now in the wake of the Windsor decision there is a renewed push in Congress to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (a brainchild of the late Senator Edward Kennedy) which would add sexual orientation as a suspect classification, following the path of Justice Anthony Kennedy who, in his majority opinion in that decision, abandoned all precedent for such classifications. Social and religious conservatives have warned us for years that this measure would threaten the religious liberties and hiring choices not only of religious institutions but also religious individuals. Is this what the Republican Party will become once they’ve ditched “those embarrassing religious wackos”?

Current laws on marriage—as on anything else for that matter—reflect a particular view of morality. It is a view which understands that the purpose of marriage is to ensure that any children brought forth from that marriage are raised by their biological mother and father and is meant to ensure permanence, exclusivity, and fidelity between those parents. Marriage is under assault by another moral view which holds that this integral interest of children, and society, doesn’t matter, that laws on marriage must preserve equality and “equal access”, pushing aside the question of the purpose and definition of marriage. It is social conservatives who have been fighting the good fight on this issue. If Republicans abandon a framework validated by centuries of experience it is they who will be on the wrong side of history. The other side represents not simply deafness to moral questions but an entirely different moral framework.

Constitutional scholar Hadley Arkes said that “[T]he family is the first coiner of citizens, and it can never be a matter of moral indifference as to the moral norms on which children are begotten and in turn nurtured and shaped in their character.”

Social conservatives cannot expect moderates, establishment Republicans, libertarians or fiscal conservatives to prevail on these issues or even to engage the fight. They have no heart for it. Moderation on these issues opposes winning, ridicules the moral stances required to win and doesn’t understand the arguments even if it were temperamentally suited to make them. It doesn’t want to win, it only wants peace which means moral and intellectual disarmament while those on the other side are ready for, and have been engaged in, pitched battle. It means that as soon as the media begins its plea for moderation (only from our side) the moderates are with them and throw in the towel. When the principle you stand on is compromise the other side knows that and will continually be back for more. It is why Democrats and liberals push for radical ends while demanding moderation from our side.

The bottom line is that engaging on these issues, and across the gamut of issues conservatives are involved in, is to understand that liberalism is built on an edifice of lies. Egalitarianism. Moral relativism. Sexual libertinism. The welfare state. The mutability or even perfection of man’s nature. That poverty is in itself an evil whose elimination is the state’s responsibility. And to understand these are lies one must understand there are truths, and that there are moral truths as there are economic truths. And that a readiness to abandon those among us [Republicans] who represent moral truths is to give the field to lies.

Further, polls are not a measure of whether something is either moral or true. They are only and at best a measure of its popularity. Are polls then to determine Republicans’ readiness to stand for truth and for what truths we will stand? What other truths would these establishment Republicans abandon? Many counseled us to toss out “those pro-lifers, those single-issue voters” (by the way, polls, especially among young people are more pro-life now than at any time since Roe v. Wade—so much for inevitability). As we abandon one moral issue should we prepare to abandon others?

I daresay that among those who would encourage us to embrace and cherish the moral conscience represented by social conservatives are Dred Scott, Martin Luther King, Jr., George Washington, and Ronald Reagan. I’ll stand with them. I hope the Republican Party does the same.

Gene Wisdom is an Alabama native but has lived in the Nashville area since 2007. He, his wife Vicki, and their dog Savannah live near Nolensville. Gene is a conservative activist and leads the Conservative Fusion Book Club.

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Every Soulsville Charter School Graduate Going to College

MEMPHIS, TN (abc24.com) - Drums, trumpets, and diplomas. The school known for its musical prowess is now known for its academic success.

The Soulsville Charter School, which opened in 2005, held its first ever graduation Thursday night. More than fifty students walked across the stage and each one is headed to college. (link)

Follow the link and watch the video. You will not see a single white face among the students. This excellent school that is changing lives would not be legal in Nashville under the proposed diversity plan. Many in Nashville would rather condemn Black children to a life of poverty, ignorance and probably prison rather than let them get educated in a school that was less than 50% white. 

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Metro Nashville school board to tackle diversity plan

Sep 25, 2012, The Tennessean

The Metro Nashville school board will take the first step toward creating an official diversity plan tonight by considering a proposal drafted by Director of Schools Jesse Register and consultant Leonard Stevens.(link)

One of the proposals is that no school be more than 50% of any race or ethnic group. This would apply to charter schools also. Some of the miracles in education improvement have taken place in inner city charter schools that are majority Black. A good example is The Soulsville Charter School in Memphis which is almost all Black student body. Students are excelling and they are not sitting next to whites to do it. There is nothing magical about sitting next to a white kid.

Do we want to sacrifice giving a child a great education to some politically correct mathematical formula?

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The housing crisis: I saw it coming.

To tell you the truth, two years ago I didn’t know the difference between a credit default swap and a collateralized debt instrument, but I knew a housing crisis was brewing. I did not know how widespread it would be or the impact it would have on the rest of the economy, but I knew something was terribly wrong.

I have been Director of Housing Services for a non-profit housing counseling agency for the last sixteen years. For most of this time our primary housing service has been providing prior-to-purchase, housing counseling. We provide two types. We offer single session, eight-hour housing workshops, which we call “Fast-track." We also offer in-depth, long-term counseling, which we call “Homebuyers Club.”

Fast Track is for people who are already eligible for a home mortgage. People are often motivated to take the class because it is required in order to be eligible for certain down-payment assistance programs or preferential interest rate programs. In an eight hour class the client learns all they need to know about working with a realtor; getting a good mortgage; protecting their investment; purchasing homeowners insurance; getting a home inspection; down payment assistance programs; and closing on their home.

Our Homebuyers Cub program is quite different. It is for people who have serious obstacles to homeownership. While clients learn the same things as participants in the Fast Track, the focus is on getting people ready to get a mortgage. Most of the clients in our Homebuyers Club are single mothers. Most are African American. Most are low income. Clients attend class for an hour and a half, once a month, for a year. Many clients are still not ready after a year and they re-enroll and stay in class. For many of our clients it takes two or three years before they are ready to purchase a home.

In a Homebuyers Club, we not only teach the mechanics of home buying but, more importantly, we change people’s values and habits. We teach the virtue of delayed gratification. We teach people how to clean up their credit and improve their credit score. We encourage people to get a checking account and to stop using check-cashing services. We teach money management skills and encourage savings.

Many times, after being in a Homebuyers Club for a while a Club member may decide that, rather than pursuing homeownership at this time, they are better off getting their GED or skills or training that will enhance their potential to earn more money, and then at a later time try to become homeowners. Many participants in our Homebuyers Club never buy a house while in our program but make other positive changes that will improve their lives. While the primary measure of success in this program is the number of people who actually become homeowners, the number of people who improve their lives, yet do not become homeowners, is a greater number. I have always felt like we helped a lot more people than simply the number of people who became homeowners. Since the start of our Homebuyers Club we have had over 735 people become homeowners. Unfortunately, not many of these successes occurred in the past three years.

At one time we had sixteen Homebuyers Clubs and average attendance in each club was about twelve. Now we have four clubs and attendance is only about six per club. About three to four years ago attendance started dropping in our clubs, and when we offered new clubs we had few takers.

Managing a Homebuyers Club requires providing a lot of encouragement to participants. Clients can easily get discouraged. Prior to a meeting, clients get a reminder call and a reminder post card. If a client misses a couple meetings, we try to reach them to find out why they have not been attending.

It was about three years ago that I noticed a disturbing trend. I would call a client and the conversation would go like this: “I noticed you missed the last couple of Homebuyers Club meetings and I just wanted to see what was going on.”

“Mr. Rod,” the client would say excitedly, “I have good news. I bought a house.”

I would immediately have a sinking feeling in my stomach. I knew the client was not mortgage-ready. “Great!” I would say. “Tell me about it.”

The client would start describing her new home. Then I would say, “Tell me about the financing. What kind of loan did you get?”

More often than not, the client did not know. I would ask the client to bring in her mortgage papers for review. What I would find is that our clients were getting terrible loans. They would buy their homes with no money down. They often were getting 80/20 loans with the 80% loan a hybrid adjustable, with a low teaser rate fixed for three years and then adjusting every six months thereafter. These loans had high margins and payments that would adjust steeply after the end of the fixed period. The 20% loan was often fixed but with very high interest rates of 12% to 22%.

Most often the clients had no idea what they had gotten themselves into. If they would have just stuck with our program, they could have gotten a FHA fixed loan but they did not. The temptation to do it the easy way was just too great. Also, the clients were often misled and told they could refinance before the loan reset. They were told this as if it was almost automatic. They were not told that they would have to meet income and debt and credit standards in order to refinance their loan. It was presented as something they could do almost automatically.

After a while the problem was not that our clients were dropping out of our program and getting bad loans, they were never enrolling in the first place. They no longer needed us and the discipline our program required. With “creative financing” they could buy a house without saving any money or changing their habits. They could get a loan without becoming responsible. Income and credit were not necessary. Knowing the clients I was serving, I was shocked that anyone would give these clients a loan in their current circumstances.

I saw this crisis coming. It was like watching a train on a collision course; I knew without a doubt that many of these clients were going to default.

I still believe in the goal of helping poor people become homeowners. If done the right way it permanently helps people escape terrible environments. It causes people to be more responsible. It builds wealth. It lifts people out of poverty for generations to come. It changes lives. Helping low-income people climb out of poverty is good for society and is the right thing to do.

If done the right way, low-income people can be given assistance to help them become responsible homeowners and it does not have to lead to foreclosures. Handing out mortgages to undeserving people, however, who have not leaned new skills, behaviors, and values can be detrimental to society and it betrays poor people in the process.

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'Extreme Makeover' house faces foreclosure

LAKE CITY, Ga. (AP) — More than 1,800 people showed up to help ABC's "Extreme Makeover" team demolish a family's decrepit home and replace it with a sparkling, four-bedroom mini-mansion in 2005.


Three years later, the reality TV show's most ambitious project at the time has become the latest victim of the foreclosure crisis. (link)

Comment: This is sad, but not surprising. This extreme case represents part of what is wrong with give-away programs. Poverty is not just an issue of lack of money, but it concerns a total mindset. Many social programs fail in their mission of lifting people out of poverty because they fail to change the way people think. Many programs simply subsidize the recipients' poverty, without requiring the recipient to change their values and behavior. If people do not learn delayed gratification, improve their money management skills and change the way they think, then they are destined to remain poor. I suspect that if we redistributed all of the wealth in America starting tomorrow morning, by tomorrow night we would again have rich people and poor people.

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The House of Representative Apologizes for Slavery

The House of Representatives today formally apologized to African-Americans “on behalf of the people of the United States, for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow.” (link) The resolutions says that Africans forced into slavery "were brutalized, humiliated, dehumanized and subjected to the indignity of being stripped of their names and heritage" and that black Americans today continue to suffer from the consequences of slavery and Jim Crow laws that fostered discrimination and segregation.

If I were in the Congress, I would have went along with this resolution and mumbled an "aye", not that I think it does any good or really means much but it does no harm. The vote was by voice vote so no one in the Congress can be disproved it they say they voted for it or against it or say they simply didn’t vote. Congress is routinely passing resolution that commemorate this or that or recognize people for their accomplishments, or express a sentiment of the House on some topic, so one more resolution expressing the will of the House of Representatives will do no harm.

What does it really mean? It is an apology to “African-Americans” “on behalf of the people of the United States.” Well, African Americans are some of the “people of the United States” so African-Americans who are the descendants of slaves are included in the apology to African Americans. How logical is that?

What if you are the descendant of immigrants who were not even here during the era of slavery? What if your ancestors never owned slaves and maybe were abolitionist, or died fighting against slavery, or marched for civil rights? It doesn’t matter; Congress just apologized for slavery on your behalf.

I would like to have seen the bill expanded to include an apology for other sins against African-Americans. The Congress should have apologized for the “fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery, and Jim Crow, and the welfare enslavement, dependency and destruction of the Black community caused by the Great Society and other welfare enactments.” I could have enthusiastically supported such a resolution.

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Bad Bitch

I love the work I do even if I do not always love my job. If it were all enjoyable and rewarding they wouldn’t have to pay you for doing it. As Director of Housing Services for a non-profit housing counseling agency, I have had a role in helping 685 people become homeowners. Most of these people were low income. The majority was African-American. Many were moving out of public housing. Many of them were single mothers. Most of them were the first in their family to ever achieve homeownership. Many of them had only worked sporadically until the advent of Welfare Reform.

These clients of mine attend a year-long program called Homebuyers Club. A Homebuyers Club is more than just a series of meetings teaching the fundamentals of purchasing a home. A meeting of a Homebuyers Club often resembles a revival meeting or AA meeting. Clients share their setbacks, their challenges, and celebrate their successes. Clients learn improved money-management skills and they learn how to repair and maintain their credit. They learn how to avoid being victims of unscrupulous people who prey on the financially less sophisticated. They open checking accounts and stop using check-cashing services. They learn that to get ahead you must learn delayed gratification. They budget and save money. Some of them work with us for three or four years before they are ready to purchase a home. They have to not only change their circumstances but also change their way of thinking and change their values.

These clients, when they purchase a home, do not get the exploding ARMs and sub prime loans one hears so much about, but get FHA fixed-rate loans. Most of them take advantage of down payment assistance programs such as the American Dream Down payment Assistance (ADDI) program or other assistance programs. The thing that contributes more to their success than the down payment assistance is that we help them believe that the American Dream is possible.

For most low-income people, homeownership is the key to building wealth and giving their children a better life than they had. Homeownership creates a sense of self-esteem in a person. It makes them more invested in their community. Studies show that in a comparison of renters to homeowners, holding the variable of income fixed, that children of homeowners have fewer pre-marital pregnancies, commit less crime and do better in school.

Unfortunately, not everyone who expresses an interest in our program makes it to home ownership. Many inquire but never follow through. Other try but drop out. Even those who drop out however may benefit. They may learn how to repair and protect their credit rating. They may benefit by leaning why a “whole life” insurance policy is not as good as a “term” policy. They may learn that an income tax “rapid refund” is a rip-off. So, even those who do not become homeowners may benefit from being in the program. Also, one never knows what seed may be planted that germinates years later. But you know that many other who you encounter don’t “get it”. They cannot be convinced they there is any reason to try to improve their life.

Last Saturday, I went to an event at a public housing project where we offered the clients a service we call a “Front Door”. This is a one-on-one counseling session where we review the client’s income, debt, and credit and if they chose to pursue homeownership we help them develop an “action plan”. One of my clients on Saturday was a young black girl in her early-twenties. She was the mother of three children, by three different fathers and was not receiving child support. Two of the fathers were incarcerated and one she did not where he was. She worked at a job that barely paid above minimum wage. She had never graduated from high school and did not have a GED.

She was wearing a low-cut V-neck dress. I can’t help myself; when a woman is showing cleavage, I look. Tattooed across her chest were the words “Bad Bitch”. I could not see the first “B” or the “h” but could read the words.

I wondered what would cause a young girl to so brand herself? Is it the total sense of helplessness? Is it the hip-hop culture? Was it done in a drug-induced state? Does it make her more attractive to men in her social circle? Did she ever have anyone in her life that said to her, “that is not a good idea”?

I had to tell her that her chance of achieving homeownership was very slim in her current financial circumstances. Her income was too low to qualify for even the most generous assistance programs. I suggested she join a companion program to our Homebuyers Club, called “Financial Fitness” where she could learn some improved money-management skills. I told her we offer the GED classes at our center and that if she would get her GED, she could find a better paying job and make more money, and then pursue homeownership. She said she would think about it.

There are plenty or resources to help a young lady like this. Our programs are not operating at capacity. We never have to turn anyone away. There are programs that help people get their GED, there are job-training programs, there are programs that teach grooming and “Dress of Success”. There is no shortage of programs offering support. But how do you reach people and make them believe that there is a better way to live?

Welfare reform has been a great success in ending the welfare enslavement of many Black Americans, but we need to do more. We should not be content that millions of Americans are trapped in despair and poverty. No young girl should grow up and assume that it is the norm to be an unwed mother who drops out of school by age sixteen. No young man should have to assume he will be in prison or dead by the time he is twenty.

How can they be made to believe that there can be a better way to live? I don’t know. I wish I did. But we should not give up. We need bold programs; not programs that make people dependent on a government handout, but programs that break the cycle of poverty. Perhaps we should pay a girl $5000 if she graduates from high school and is not an unwed mother. Maybe we should pay a young boy $5000 if he can graduate from high school and has never been arrested or gotten a girl pregnant. In the short run, it may cost more to help people break the bonds of poverty than to subsidize their poverty, but I think we should do it.

I will probably never hear from Bad Bitch.

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