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Show Ccrr.ncr.t iVom he Capital -:K THE AMERICAN TAXPAYER: CASUALTY IN THE WAR ON POVERTY jjg: byVantNeff .Vffrttfe threatened him with a riot. They'd turn New York City into a bloodbath . . . "make Watts look like a tea party." (Thirty-three people were killed, kill-ed, and over 1000 injured, in the Watts "tea party.") What would a competent, balanced individual do in a similar situation? situ-ation? He'd pick up the phone and call the police. Hoodlums are a police matter. However, instead of doing- the normal thing, Haryou-Act's director borrowed $400,000 from a bank. This money he used to set up "blind alley jobs" to appease ap-pease the young extortionists. By "blind alley jobs" he meant jobs that didn't improve the youngsters' skills, but merely put money in their pockets! That's the ignoble way money is being used in the noble War on Poverty. The "staffs" are well paid. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are disappearing disap-pearing .. . . nobody wants to say where, or cares. And taxpayers' money is being used to buy civil obedience from juvenile delinquents delin-quents at the rate of about $1000 per kid! Two questions loom up : Who - We The War on Poverty is a noble idea. For almost two years the program has used v.-isfc amounts of the taxpayer's iuOiv;y. Has this money been used r.obly? let's examine the available record and see for OlH'sKJiVeS. New York City's War on Poverty is a good subject for review. A recent investigation of War on Poverty expenditures expendi-tures in Harlem has brought much materia! to light. Maybe New York will show how Federal Fed-eral rnoj:ey is handled in the -War on Poverty across the nation. New York's version of the War 011 Poverty, Hatyou-Act, has a large staff. It is jut as rue of War on Poverty auli-lies auli-lies throughout the country. "or instance, one Job Corps ..-raining coiitev in Kentucky aas 360 staff njcniber.-! and only Se8 fladeutsi In addition, a re-i.toay re-i.toay showed that the ive of 51 of the ca?im'a cm-pVyeerf cm-pVyeerf were on the payroll. Anolner Job Corps camp, in In-cUvaa, In-cUvaa, ".as taore employees than, stu.knts! But, to get back to Hs.ilc:. The Ilaryou-Act staff is vo'd p:iid. In fact, the niojuhiy i.ayroil comes to $500,-000. $500,-000. Thr.t3 ?3 :u!'..ion a year! So EVudi iov salaries. Let's examine clhoi" expenses. During Dur-ing its fust eis'utoen months of operation, $800,000 "evap-oraicd" "evap-oraicd" from Haryou-Act's coffers. cof-fers. That is, 110 one can tell where it went. There are no vouchers, no receipts, no nothing. no-thing. (This fact came out only a f tor the Government seized the books of Ilaryou-Act. Previously, Previous-ly, Haryou-Act's director had arrogantly refused to let gov-ernmmit gov-ernmmit investigators see his records. Now that the cat is out of the bag, the director barefacedly bare-facedly claims that thei'e was no "mismanagement" of funds . . . even though he can't say how the money was spent.) There's a strange inconsistency inconsis-tency here. The Federal Government Gov-ernment requires you and me to account for our income and expenses in detail on our income in-come tax reports. Businessmen must explain such small items as taxi rides, lunches, and tips in reporting on their expense accounts to the Internal Revenue Rev-enue Service. Yet, here's a Federal Fed-eral official who plays fast and loose with close to a million dollars of your money and mine, and so far has got by with a simple "I don't know where it went!" Now that we've looked at salaries sal-aries and other "expenses," let's take note of one example of how the poor get money from Haryou-Act. Here's how one "crash program" pro-gram" got started. According to Haryou-Act's director, several sev-eral hundred Harlem youths Times were against his appointment. ap-pointment. But Wingate got the- job because Powell "influenced" "in-fluenced" the House Committee that controls War on Poverty funds. Apparently War on Poverty appointments are based more on "who you know" than high ' qualifications and sterling character. Even Black Muslims, Mus-lims, members of the sect that has sworn to destroy the white man, are on the staff of Haryou-Act! The point is, the bright promise prom-ise of the War on Poverty is being tarnished by the dirty, or inept, hands to which it has been entrusted. Money staggering stag-gering amounts of it is being lost, mishandled, or put to questionable use. The reason is simple: The War on Poverty Pov-erty is becoming the expansive plaything of politicians, professional pro-fessional "bleeding hearts", and unqualified administrators. administra-tors. (The "bleeding hearts" are just as dangerous as the unscrupulous. Recent reports have shown that one Job Corps camp was completely undisciplined undis-ciplined . . . gangs of .thugs terrorized the serious students. A staff member reported that the mess grew out of the director's di-rector's "bleeding heart" philosophy: phi-losophy: "Spoil these boys . . . they've never been spoiled before" be-fore" was his dictum.) The cure is equally simple: 1. Get the political hacks, the dreamers, and the parasites out of the program. 2. Put down in black and white what specific purposes Federal money mon-ey is to be used for, exactly how much, and require precise accounting. Unless the cure is applied, the War on Povei'ty may end up wasting vast sums of the taxpayers' money without with-out accomplishing any useful social purpose. After all, if it cost us $400,000 to quell a few hundred kids in Harlem, how much will it cost to appease similar threats across the country next year . . . two years from now . . . ten years hence? Up to now the Government has taken only stop-gap measures. meas-ures. For example, Wingate was finally asked to take a leave of absence with pay. But are stop-gap measures enough? Or should the program be stringently string-ently revised? Or, scrapped entirely? The Federal Government Govern-ment is already spending billions bil-lions of dollars more than is taken in. How long can waste and profligacy be tolerated? Fortunately, the People still have a voice in the United States Government . . . and a stream of mail to Washington could bring action. Tell your Congressman your opinion. After all, the War on Poverty is wasting your money I is responsible for this Harlem mess . . . and how did he get his job? Livingston Wingate, the director di-rector of Haryou-Act, is responsible. re-sponsible. How did he get his job? Very simple ... he "knew somebody." And that "somebody" "some-body" is the powerful political boss of Harlem, Congressman Adam Clayton Powell. (He's the lawmaker who put his wife on the Federal payroll to the tune of $18,900 although she spends most of her time in Puerto Rico. He's the minister who has had so much fun spending spend-ing Federal money on foreign junkets that Congress had to confine his trips to the U.S. Recently a New York State Supreme Su-preme Court judge described him as a man "not to be believed be-lieved or trusted" because he "used every trick and device in the book to flout the law." His honor refers to Powell's efforts to avoid paying a fine imposed on him in 1963 for slandering a woman. The fine still isn't paid in full. Few favored Wingate for the job. Even the ultra-liberal writers on the New York |