By Jacob Hornberger

Have you ever wondered how countries such as Cuba, North Korea, and China became completely socialist? It’s really not a mystery. Government officials, most of whom suffer from an insatiable thirst for power, seize upon some human tragedy or disaster and tell the people, “If you will just give us power over your lives and fortunes, we will taken care of you and protect you from harm.” The citizenry, many of whom live lives of fear and insecurity, cannot pass up the bargain. What could be better than to be take care of by a paternalistic state and protected from the bad things that life presents?

Of course, it’s all a scam, one in which people surrender their freedom in the hope of achieving a feeling of safety and security, only to find that they are just as insecure as ever, if not more so, given the brutal methods that government resorts to in order to maintain its control.

As government wields increasing control over the lives and fortunes of the citizenry, the tendency to blame government itself for the problems dissipates. Like children who are scared of antagonizing their parents, who wield life or death power over them, adults in a socialist society are scared to death to upset the entity in charge of taking care of them.

I had a first-hand experience with this phenomenon when I visited Cuba several years ago. A young cab driver and his wife told me why Cubans must be very careful about criticizing the government or its socialist system. It’s not just the nonexistence of civil liberties but also because of Cuba’s socialist economic system.

Keep in mind that in a purely socialist system, the government is the owner of everything. In Cuba, while there were a few small exceptions when I was there, for all practical purposes the state was the sole employer. Let that sink in: Virtually everyone in Cuba works for the state. Thus, if an employee gets fired, he has no other employer with whom to go to work. If the state wants to get nasty by refusing to rehire a person, it can mean death by starvation.

The cab driver told me that the state never uses that power in such a brutal way. Instead, it simply transfers independent-minded employees to divisions of the “company” in other towns and cities. Thus, the cab driver told me that the state could separate him and his wife by transferring him to a city hundreds of miles away while retaining his wife in Havana.

Now, you might say, “But America still has features of a free-market system and so it’s not like in Cuba. Here, private businesses still exist, people are still free to trade, and workers are free to quit their jobs and go to others.”

That’s true but the problem we’re facing is that unless the American people put a stop to it, the inexorable trend is toward a pure socialist system. Ever since the 1920s, each new socialist and interventionist program has brought new crises, which then have been used as the excuse for new socialist and interventionist programs.

Everywhere you look today here in the United States, there is a crisis: Social Security, the drug war, Medicare, Medicaid, the monetary system, the banking system, the financial system, FDIC, welfare, terrorism, immigration. There is obviously a common denominator in all this: the federal government, and specifically its socialist and interventionist (and imperialist) programs.

But we’re not supposed to say that. Instead, we’re expected to repeat the official mantras that everyone is taught in public school and in state-supported universities: The reasons for all these crises and failures is deregulation, insufficient regulation, the wrong people in office, speculators, greed, OPEC, terrorists, Muslims, illegal aliens, or whatever. We’re simply not supposed to even suggest that it’s the system itself that is the problem.

In Cuba, this mindset is manifested by a steadfast insistence that Cuba’s economic misery is due solely to the U.S. embargo, not Cuba’s socialist system. In the United States, it’s manifested by a steadfast insistence that the Great Depression was caused by free enterprise and greed and saved by Roosevelt’s socialist and interventionist programs. For that matter, just pointing out that Roosevelt’s programs were socialistic and fascistic in nature is practically considered an act of heresy, given the idol status that the paternalistic state has achieved for many Americans.

As Ludwig von Mises pointed out, the never-ending series of interventions ultimately leads to a complete nationalization of everything. Thus, it’s no surprise that U.S. statists are now calling for a complete government takeover of the banking industry, just like in the socialist paradise of Cuba. What next — a nationalization of the oil industry, just like in Venezuela and Mexico?

That’s the road America is headed down and has been heading down for several decades — the road to socialism, the road to serfdom. The only issue is whether freedom-loving Americans will put a stop to it before it’s too late

Visit: http://campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=18

By Jacob Hornberger

Have you ever wondered how countries such as Cuba, North Korea, and China became completely socialist? It’s really not a mystery. Government officials, most of whom suffer from an insatiable thirst for power, seize upon some human tragedy or disaster and tell the people, “If you will just give us power over your lives and fortunes, we will taken care of you and protect you from harm.” The citizenry, many of whom live lives of fear and insecurity, cannot pass up the bargain. What could be better than to be take care of by a paternalistic state and protected from the bad things that life presents?

Of course, it’s all a scam, one in which people surrender their freedom in the hope of achieving a feeling of safety and security, only to find that they are just as insecure as ever, if not more so, given the brutal methods that government resorts to in order to maintain its control.

As government wields increasing control over the lives and fortunes of the citizenry, the tendency to blame government itself for the problems dissipates. Like children who are scared of antagonizing their parents, who wield life or death power over them, adults in a socialist society are scared to death to upset the entity in charge of taking care of them.

I had a first-hand experience with this phenomenon when I visited Cuba several years ago. A young cab driver and his wife told me why Cubans must be very careful about criticizing the government or its socialist system. It’s not just the nonexistence of civil liberties but also because of Cuba’s socialist economic system.

Keep in mind that in a purely socialist system, the government is the owner of everything. In Cuba, while there were a few small exceptions when I was there, for all practical purposes the state was the sole employer. Let that sink in: Virtually everyone in Cuba works for the state. Thus, if an employee gets fired, he has no other employer with whom to go to work. If the state wants to get nasty by refusing to rehire a person, it can mean death by starvation.

The cab driver told me that the state never uses that power in such a brutal way. Instead, it simply transfers independent-minded employees to divisions of the “company” in other towns and cities. Thus, the cab driver told me that the state could separate him and his wife by transferring him to a city hundreds of miles away while retaining his wife in Havana.

Now, you might say, “But America still has features of a free-market system and so it’s not like in Cuba. Here, private businesses still exist, people are still free to trade, and workers are free to quit their jobs and go to others.”

That’s true but the problem we’re facing is that unless the American people put a stop to it, the inexorable trend is toward a pure socialist system. Ever since the 1920s, each new socialist and interventionist program has brought new crises, which then have been used as the excuse for new socialist and interventionist programs.

Everywhere you look today here in the United States, there is a crisis: Social Security, the drug war, Medicare, Medicaid, the monetary system, the banking system, the financial system, FDIC, welfare, terrorism, immigration. There is obviously a common denominator in all this: the federal government, and specifically its socialist and interventionist (and imperialist) programs.

But we’re not supposed to say that. Instead, we’re expected to repeat the official mantras that everyone is taught in public school and in state-supported universities: The reasons for all these crises and failures is deregulation, insufficient regulation, the wrong people in office, speculators, greed, OPEC, terrorists, Muslims, illegal aliens, or whatever. We’re simply not supposed to even suggest that it’s the system itself that is the problem.

In Cuba, this mindset is manifested by a steadfast insistence that Cuba’s economic misery is due solely to the U.S. embargo, not Cuba’s socialist system. In the United States, it’s manifested by a steadfast insistence that the Great Depression was caused by free enterprise and greed and saved by Roosevelt’s socialist and interventionist programs. For that matter, just pointing out that Roosevelt’s programs were socialistic and fascistic in nature is practically considered an act of heresy, given the idol status that the paternalistic state has achieved for many Americans.

As Ludwig von Mises pointed out, the never-ending series of interventions ultimately leads to a complete nationalization of everything. Thus, it’s no surprise that U.S. statists are now calling for a complete government takeover of the banking industry, just like in the socialist paradise of Cuba. What next — a nationalization of the oil industry, just like in Venezuela and Mexico?

That’s the road America is headed down and has been heading down for several decades — the road to socialism, the road to serfdom. The only issue is whether freedom-loving Americans will put a stop to it before it’s too late

Visit: http://campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=18

On August 31, 2008, right after the Democratic National Convention in Colorado, the Boston Globe published a letter from L. David Alinsky boasting about how Barack Obama had made enormously effective use of his training in the methods of David’s late father, the famous Chicago radical, Saul D. Alinsky.

David Alinsky gloated: “I am proud to see that my father’s model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It is a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday.”

Confirming that Obama was trained in Chicago by the Alinsky apparatus, David Alinsky wrote: “It is an amazingly powerful format, and the method of my late father always works to get the message out and get the supporters on board. When executed meticulously and thoughtfully, it is a powerful strategy for initiating change and making it really happen. Obama learned his lesson well.”

Describing how the Democratic National Convention was a “perfectly organized event, Saul Alinsky style,” David Alinsky wrote: “All the elements were present: the individual stories told by real people of their situations and hardships, the packed-to-the rafters crowd, the crowd’s chanting of key phrases and names, the action on the spot of texting and phoning to show instant support and commitment to jump into the political battle, the rallying selections of music, the setting of the agenda by the power people.”

Indeed, the son has reason to boast that his father’s organizing techniques were so effectively used by a longshot candidate to climb the path to America’s highest office. The most significant part of Barack Obama’s education was not at Columbia University or Harvard Law School, but the years he spent being trained in the Saul Alinsky system for community organizing and then practicing what he learned.

Obama was trained by the Alinsky organization called Industrial Areas Foundation (founded by Alinsky in 1940), after which Obama taught workshops on the Alinsky method. Obama learned how to put together a new style presidential campaign that decisively defeated the Clinton machine plus the Republican Party in a dramatic one-two punch never before seen in politics.

Alinsky’s organization was based in Chicago, nestled under the protective wing of the Democratic political machine, but his reach extended all over the country from New York to California. Hillary Clinton wrote her Wellesley thesis on Alinsky, who then offered her a job (which she turned down to enroll in Yale Law School).

Americans who care about our nation and its future should study Saul Alinsky and what is known today as “the Alinsky ideology and Alinsky concepts of mass organization for power.” These were the lessons he taught his eager students. He died in 1972, but he left behind a cadre of community organizers who had been trained how to carry out the political strategies described in Alinsky’s frank and elegantly written book called Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals (originally published by Random House in 1971).

The tone of this book and its obvious determination to change America are made clear by this dedication printed at the very beginning:

“Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins — or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer.”

Saul Alinsky’s worldview was that the United States is an oppressive and racist society where most people (the Have-Nots) are the victims of economic injustice with a future of despair. He wanted a radical change of America’s social and economic structure, and he planned to achieve that through creating public discontent and moral confusion. His goal was not to arrive at compromise or peaceful solution; his goal was to crush the Haves and transform society.

Alinsky developed concepts to achieve power through mass organization. Organizing was his word for revolution. His 1946 book, Reville for Radicals, had already made clear that he wanted to move the United States from capitalism to socialism, where the means of production would be owned by all the people (i.e., the government). A believer in economic determinism, he viewed unemployment, disease, crime and bigotry as byproducts of capitalism. So he called for massive change.

To achieve this, he sought local community organizers who projected confidence, vision and change. Barack Obama fit the profile. Alinsky didn’t want just talkers; he wanted radicals who were prepared to take bold action to organize the discontented, precipitate crises, grab power, and thereby transform society. He taught these radicals how to infiltrate existing institutions such as churches, unions and political parties, gain influence in them, and then introduce change.

Chapter 1 of Rules for Radicals called The Purpose makes Alinsky’s goal very clear. His worldview is that mankind is divided into three parts: “the Haves, the Have-Nots, and the Have-a-Little, Want Mores.” His purpose is to teach the Have-Nots how to take power and money away from the Haves. “We are concerned,” he said, “with how to create mass organizations to seize power. . . . We are talking about a mass power organization which will change the world. . . . This means revolution.”

“Change” is Alinsky’s favorite word, used on page after page. “I will argue,” he writes, “that man’s hopes lie in the acceptance of the great law of change.” Alinsky uses what he calls “general concepts of change” to move us toward “a science of revolution.” What he calls “change” means massive change in our socio-economic structure. What he calls “organizing” means pursuing confrontational political tactics. Alinsky teaches the Have-Nots to “hate the establishment of the Haves” because they have “power, money, food, security, and luxury. They suffocate in their surpluses while the Have-Nots starve.” He claims that “justice, morality, law, and order, are mere words used by the Haves to justify and secure their status quo.” He proclaims that his aim is to teach the Have-Nots “how to organize for power: how to get it and to use it.”

Alinsky’s second chapter, called Of Means and Ends, craftily poses many difficult moral dilemmas, and his “tenth rule of the ethics of means and ends” is: “you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral arguments.”

He doesn’t ignore traditional moral standards or dismiss them as unnecessary. He is much more devious; he teaches his followers that “Moral rationalization is indispensable at all times of action whether to justify the selection or the use of ends or means.” He reminds his trainees that “All effective actions require the passport of morality.”

Alinsky certainly doesn’t mean that all actions must be moral. He means that you decide what you want or need to do and then cloak your actions with the language of morality. Phrase your goals in “general terms like ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,’ ‘Of the Common Welfare,’ ‘Pursuit of Happiness,’ or ‘Bread and Peace.’” He reminds us that the Communists used words like “democracy” and “equality,” but they had no relation whatsoever to what Americans understand by those terms.

At the same time, Alinsky admonishes his organizers that they are conducting war, so there are no rules of fair play and there can be no compromise.

Recognizing the importance of words, Alinsky demands that his organizers use the word “power,” which he calls a word of force, vigor and simplicity. Power is what he wants — and he doesn’t want to be bothered with those who shrink from using this powerful word. He advises his followers not “to pander to those who have no stomach for straight language.”

In the chapter called The Education of an Organizer, Alinsky explains that he conducted “a special training school for organizers with a full-time, fifteen-month program.” It wasn’t an easy regimen, Alinsky warned; it “requires frequent long conferences on organizational problems, analysis of power patterns, communication, conflict tactics, the education and development of community leaders, and the methods of introduction of new issues.”

The qualities Alinsky looked for in a good organizer were ego (“reaching for the highest level for which man can reach — to create, to be a ‘great creator,’ to play God”), curiosity (raising “questions that agitate, that break through the accepted pattern”), irreverence (“nothing is sacred”; the organizer “detests dogma, defies any finite definition of morality”), imagination (“the fuel for the force that keeps an organizer organizing”), a sense of humor (“the most potent weapons known to mankind are satire and ridicule”), and an organized personality with confidence in presenting the right reason for his actions only “as a moral rationalization after the right end has been achieved.”

In the chapter on Communication, Alinsky teaches his organizers how to direct the thinking of his people while letting them think they are making their own decisions. The organizer should develop skills in the manipulative technique of asking “loaded questions designed to elicit particular responses and to steer the organization’s decision-making process in the direction which the organizer prefers.”

The chapter called In the Beginning describes how to train the community organizer in how to make himself acceptable to the Have-Nots in the local community. “From the moment the organizer enters a community he lives, dreams, eats, breathes, sleeps only one thing and that is to build the mass power base of what he calls the army. Until he has developed that mass power base, he confronts no major issues.”

The organizer’s “biggest job is to give the people the feeling that they can do something.” The organizer’s job is “to build confidence and hope in the idea of organization and thus in the people themselves: to win limited victories, each of which will build confidence.” The organizer will learn that “Change comes from power, and power comes from organization.”

“The organizer’s first job is to create the issues or problems,” and “organizations must be based on many issues.” The organizer “must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression. He must search out controversy and issues, rather than avoid them, for unless there is controversy people are not concerned enough to act. . . . An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent.” He can provoke class resentment by painting Wall Street as villains.

The organizer “begins his ‘trouble making’ by stirring up these angers, frustrations, and resentments, and highlighting specific issues or grievances that heighten controversy.” The organizer must remember that “Organizations need action as an individual needs oxygen. The cessation of action brings death to the organization.”

At the same time, “The job of the organizer is to maneuver and bait the establishment so that it will publicly attack him as a ‘dangerous enemy.’” Alinsky reminds his organizers that “To attempt to operate on a good-will rather than on a power basis would be to attempt something that the world has not yet experienced.”

Alinsky’s book is full of examples of issues and organizational victories from the decade of the 1960s (such as the Vietnam War, civil rights litigation, urban renewal, and campus riots) which are not meaningful to younger Americans today. However they emphasize his strategy that organizers must use current issues and “must be aware of the tremendous importance of understanding the part played by rationalization on a mass basis.”

In the chapter called Tactics, Alinsky reminds his trainees that power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have: “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” He lists some of his recommended tactics:

“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

“Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions.” “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.” “Multiple issues mean constant action and life” for the cause. (Obama never harps on one issue as Hillary did with health care. His platform is packed with grievances from “economic justice” to “reproductive justice” to “environmental justice.”)

“Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” Alinsky’s advice was to “laugh at the enemy” to provoke “irrational anger.” (Obama used the ridicule tactic on John McCain at a rally in Las Vegas. Attacking McCain’s chairmanship of the Senate Commerce Committee, Obama sarcastically said, “Well, all I can say to Senator McCain is ‘Nice job. Nice job.’”)

“A mass impression can be lasting and intimidating.” (Obama moved his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention to a football stadium and bused in 55,000 supporters.)

“Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.” “You can club them to death with their ‘book’ of rules and regulations.” That means, taunt them every time they appear to violate their own principles, which Alinsky believes everybody does frequently.

A leader may struggle toward a decision and weigh the merits and demerits of a situation, but he must convince the people that “their cause is 100 percent on the side of the angels, and that the opposition are 100 percent on the side of the devil,” even though that is a lie because there is “really only a 10 percent difference.” Alinsky justifies this lie to achieve the transfer of power.

Alinsky describes some of his successful mass demonstrations:

Buying 100 tickets to a Rochester symphony concert for 100 blacks, feeding them lots of baked beans beforehand so that they had to get up and go to the restroom during the first musical selection. This created “a combination not only of noise but also of odor, what you might call natural stink bombs.” He reminded his readers that there is nothing illegal about needing to rush to the restroom.

Tying up all the restrooms at O’Hare Airport by having his demonstrators lock themselves in the toilet booths equipped with a book to read, and then staying there all day.

Dropping wads of chewing gum all over the walks on a college campus.

Paralyzing a bank by having 100 people show up at once with $5 or $10 to open a savings account (which they would then come back to close the following day). There is nothing illegal about this, but it created chaos for the bank. Alinsky called this “a middle-class guerrilla attack.”

Engaging in proxy fights with corporations.

Alinsky reveals his total contempt for the Haves and their devotion to self interest. He says, “I feel confident that I could persuade a millionaire on a Friday to subsidize a revolution for Saturday out of which he would make a huge profit on Sunday even though he was certain to be executed on Monday.”

When Alinsky approached the end of his Rules for Radicals and projected future strategies in the chapter entitled The Way Ahead, he laid out his plan to go after “America’s white middle class. That is where the power is.” They are the “Have-a-Little, Want Mores.”

Alinsky boasts that, “With rare exceptions, our activists and radicals are products of and rebels against our middle-class society. . . . Our rebels have contemptuously rejected the values and way of life of the middle class.”

Here is where Alinsky’s hypocrisy and duplicity become obvious. He had trained his community organizers to adopt a “middle-class identity” and familiarity with their “values and problems” in order to organize his “own people.” Now, realizing “the priceless value of his middle-class experience,” they will “begin to dissect and examine that way of life as he never has before.” “Everything now has a different meaning and purpose.”

Alinsky instructs his trainees to “return to the suburban scene of your middle class with its variety of organizations from PTAs to League of Women Voters, consumer groups, churches, and clubs. The job is to search out the leaders in these various activities, identify their major issues, find areas of common agreement, and excite their imagination with tactics that can introduce drama and adventure into the tedium of middle class life.”

And a word of Alinsky caution: “Start them easy, don’t scare them off.” When Alinsky’s community organizer moves from organizing the “poor” to organizing the “middle class,” he “discards the rhetoric that always says ‘pig.’ . . . He will view with strategic sensitivity the nature of middle-class behavior with its hangups over rudeness or aggressive, insulting, profane actions. All this and more must be grasped and used to radicalize parts of the middle class.” (Obama never talks like an angry radical. He usually wears a coat and tie, and he speaks in calm, measured tones.)

On August 31, 2008, right after the Democratic National Convention in Colorado, the Boston Globe published a letter from L. David Alinsky boasting about how Barack Obama had made enormously effective use of his training in the methods of David’s late father, the famous Chicago radical, Saul D. Alinsky.

David Alinsky gloated: “I am proud to see that my father’s model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It is a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday.”

Confirming that Obama was trained in Chicago by the Alinsky apparatus, David Alinsky wrote: “It is an amazingly powerful format, and the method of my late father always works to get the message out and get the supporters on board. When executed meticulously and thoughtfully, it is a powerful strategy for initiating change and making it really happen. Obama learned his lesson well.”

Describing how the Democratic National Convention was a “perfectly organized event, Saul Alinsky style,” David Alinsky wrote: “All the elements were present: the individual stories told by real people of their situations and hardships, the packed-to-the rafters crowd, the crowd’s chanting of key phrases and names, the action on the spot of texting and phoning to show instant support and commitment to jump into the political battle, the rallying selections of music, the setting of the agenda by the power people.”

Indeed, the son has reason to boast that his father’s organizing techniques were so effectively used by a longshot candidate to climb the path to America’s highest office. The most significant part of Barack Obama’s education was not at Columbia University or Harvard Law School, but the years he spent being trained in the Saul Alinsky system for community organizing and then practicing what he learned.

Obama was trained by the Alinsky organization called Industrial Areas Foundation (founded by Alinsky in 1940), after which Obama taught workshops on the Alinsky method. Obama learned how to put together a new style presidential campaign that decisively defeated the Clinton machine plus the Republican Party in a dramatic one-two punch never before seen in politics.

Alinsky’s organization was based in Chicago, nestled under the protective wing of the Democratic political machine, but his reach extended all over the country from New York to California. Hillary Clinton wrote her Wellesley thesis on Alinsky, who then offered her a job (which she turned down to enroll in Yale Law School).

Americans who care about our nation and its future should study Saul Alinsky and what is known today as “the Alinsky ideology and Alinsky concepts of mass organization for power.” These were the lessons he taught his eager students. He died in 1972, but he left behind a cadre of community organizers who had been trained how to carry out the political strategies described in Alinsky’s frank and elegantly written book called Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals (originally published by Random House in 1971).

The tone of this book and its obvious determination to change America are made clear by this dedication printed at the very beginning:

“Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins — or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer.”

Saul Alinsky’s worldview was that the United States is an oppressive and racist society where most people (the Have-Nots) are the victims of economic injustice with a future of despair. He wanted a radical change of America’s social and economic structure, and he planned to achieve that through creating public discontent and moral confusion. His goal was not to arrive at compromise or peaceful solution; his goal was to crush the Haves and transform society.

Alinsky developed concepts to achieve power through mass organization. Organizing was his word for revolution. His 1946 book, Reville for Radicals, had already made clear that he wanted to move the United States from capitalism to socialism, where the means of production would be owned by all the people (i.e., the government). A believer in economic determinism, he viewed unemployment, disease, crime and bigotry as byproducts of capitalism. So he called for massive change.

To achieve this, he sought local community organizers who projected confidence, vision and change. Barack Obama fit the profile. Alinsky didn’t want just talkers; he wanted radicals who were prepared to take bold action to organize the discontented, precipitate crises, grab power, and thereby transform society. He taught these radicals how to infiltrate existing institutions such as churches, unions and political parties, gain influence in them, and then introduce change.

Chapter 1 of Rules for Radicals called The Purpose makes Alinsky’s goal very clear. His worldview is that mankind is divided into three parts: “the Haves, the Have-Nots, and the Have-a-Little, Want Mores.” His purpose is to teach the Have-Nots how to take power and money away from the Haves. “We are concerned,” he said, “with how to create mass organizations to seize power. . . . We are talking about a mass power organization which will change the world. . . . This means revolution.”

“Change” is Alinsky’s favorite word, used on page after page. “I will argue,” he writes, “that man’s hopes lie in the acceptance of the great law of change.” Alinsky uses what he calls “general concepts of change” to move us toward “a science of revolution.” What he calls “change” means massive change in our socio-economic structure. What he calls “organizing” means pursuing confrontational political tactics. Alinsky teaches the Have-Nots to “hate the establishment of the Haves” because they have “power, money, food, security, and luxury. They suffocate in their surpluses while the Have-Nots starve.” He claims that “justice, morality, law, and order, are mere words used by the Haves to justify and secure their status quo.” He proclaims that his aim is to teach the Have-Nots “how to organize for power: how to get it and to use it.”

Alinsky’s second chapter, called Of Means and Ends, craftily poses many difficult moral dilemmas, and his “tenth rule of the ethics of means and ends” is: “you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral arguments.”

He doesn’t ignore traditional moral standards or dismiss them as unnecessary. He is much more devious; he teaches his followers that “Moral rationalization is indispensable at all times of action whether to justify the selection or the use of ends or means.” He reminds his trainees that “All effective actions require the passport of morality.”

Alinsky certainly doesn’t mean that all actions must be moral. He means that you decide what you want or need to do and then cloak your actions with the language of morality. Phrase your goals in “general terms like ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,’ ‘Of the Common Welfare,’ ‘Pursuit of Happiness,’ or ‘Bread and Peace.’” He reminds us that the Communists used words like “democracy” and “equality,” but they had no relation whatsoever to what Americans understand by those terms.

At the same time, Alinsky admonishes his organizers that they are conducting war, so there are no rules of fair play and there can be no compromise.

Recognizing the importance of words, Alinsky demands that his organizers use the word “power,” which he calls a word of force, vigor and simplicity. Power is what he wants — and he doesn’t want to be bothered with those who shrink from using this powerful word. He advises his followers not “to pander to those who have no stomach for straight language.”

In the chapter called The Education of an Organizer, Alinsky explains that he conducted “a special training school for organizers with a full-time, fifteen-month program.” It wasn’t an easy regimen, Alinsky warned; it “requires frequent long conferences on organizational problems, analysis of power patterns, communication, conflict tactics, the education and development of community leaders, and the methods of introduction of new issues.”

The qualities Alinsky looked for in a good organizer were ego (“reaching for the highest level for which man can reach — to create, to be a ‘great creator,’ to play God”), curiosity (raising “questions that agitate, that break through the accepted pattern”), irreverence (“nothing is sacred”; the organizer “detests dogma, defies any finite definition of morality”), imagination (“the fuel for the force that keeps an organizer organizing”), a sense of humor (“the most potent weapons known to mankind are satire and ridicule”), and an organized personality with confidence in presenting the right reason for his actions only “as a moral rationalization after the right end has been achieved.”

In the chapter on Communication, Alinsky teaches his organizers how to direct the thinking of his people while letting them think they are making their own decisions. The organizer should develop skills in the manipulative technique of asking “loaded questions designed to elicit particular responses and to steer the organization’s decision-making process in the direction which the organizer prefers.”

The chapter called In the Beginning describes how to train the community organizer in how to make himself acceptable to the Have-Nots in the local community. “From the moment the organizer enters a community he lives, dreams, eats, breathes, sleeps only one thing and that is to build the mass power base of what he calls the army. Until he has developed that mass power base, he confronts no major issues.”

The organizer’s “biggest job is to give the people the feeling that they can do something.” The organizer’s job is “to build confidence and hope in the idea of organization and thus in the people themselves: to win limited victories, each of which will build confidence.” The organizer will learn that “Change comes from power, and power comes from organization.”

“The organizer’s first job is to create the issues or problems,” and “organizations must be based on many issues.” The organizer “must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression. He must search out controversy and issues, rather than avoid them, for unless there is controversy people are not concerned enough to act. . . . An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent.” He can provoke class resentment by painting Wall Street as villains.

The organizer “begins his ‘trouble making’ by stirring up these angers, frustrations, and resentments, and highlighting specific issues or grievances that heighten controversy.” The organizer must remember that “Organizations need action as an individual needs oxygen. The cessation of action brings death to the organization.”

At the same time, “The job of the organizer is to maneuver and bait the establishment so that it will publicly attack him as a ‘dangerous enemy.’” Alinsky reminds his organizers that “To attempt to operate on a good-will rather than on a power basis would be to attempt something that the world has not yet experienced.”

Alinsky’s book is full of examples of issues and organizational victories from the decade of the 1960s (such as the Vietnam War, civil rights litigation, urban renewal, and campus riots) which are not meaningful to younger Americans today. However they emphasize his strategy that organizers must use current issues and “must be aware of the tremendous importance of understanding the part played by rationalization on a mass basis.”

In the chapter called Tactics, Alinsky reminds his trainees that power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have: “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” He lists some of his recommended tactics:

“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

“Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions.” “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.” “Multiple issues mean constant action and life” for the cause. (Obama never harps on one issue as Hillary did with health care. His platform is packed with grievances from “economic justice” to “reproductive justice” to “environmental justice.”)

“Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” Alinsky’s advice was to “laugh at the enemy” to provoke “irrational anger.” (Obama used the ridicule tactic on John McCain at a rally in Las Vegas. Attacking McCain’s chairmanship of the Senate Commerce Committee, Obama sarcastically said, “Well, all I can say to Senator McCain is ‘Nice job. Nice job.’”)

“A mass impression can be lasting and intimidating.” (Obama moved his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention to a football stadium and bused in 55,000 supporters.)

“Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.” “You can club them to death with their ‘book’ of rules and regulations.” That means, taunt them every time they appear to violate their own principles, which Alinsky believes everybody does frequently.

A leader may struggle toward a decision and weigh the merits and demerits of a situation, but he must convince the people that “their cause is 100 percent on the side of the angels, and that the opposition are 100 percent on the side of the devil,” even though that is a lie because there is “really only a 10 percent difference.” Alinsky justifies this lie to achieve the transfer of power.

Alinsky describes some of his successful mass demonstrations:

Buying 100 tickets to a Rochester symphony concert for 100 blacks, feeding them lots of baked beans beforehand so that they had to get up and go to the restroom during the first musical selection. This created “a combination not only of noise but also of odor, what you might call natural stink bombs.” He reminded his readers that there is nothing illegal about needing to rush to the restroom.

Tying up all the restrooms at O’Hare Airport by having his demonstrators lock themselves in the toilet booths equipped with a book to read, and then staying there all day.

Dropping wads of chewing gum all over the walks on a college campus.

Paralyzing a bank by having 100 people show up at once with $5 or $10 to open a savings account (which they would then come back to close the following day). There is nothing illegal about this, but it created chaos for the bank. Alinsky called this “a middle-class guerrilla attack.”

Engaging in proxy fights with corporations.

Alinsky reveals his total contempt for the Haves and their devotion to self interest. He says, “I feel confident that I could persuade a millionaire on a Friday to subsidize a revolution for Saturday out of which he would make a huge profit on Sunday even though he was certain to be executed on Monday.”

When Alinsky approached the end of his Rules for Radicals and projected future strategies in the chapter entitled The Way Ahead, he laid out his plan to go after “America’s white middle class. That is where the power is.” They are the “Have-a-Little, Want Mores.”

Alinsky boasts that, “With rare exceptions, our activists and radicals are products of and rebels against our middle-class society. . . . Our rebels have contemptuously rejected the values and way of life of the middle class.”

Here is where Alinsky’s hypocrisy and duplicity become obvious. He had trained his community organizers to adopt a “middle-class identity” and familiarity with their “values and problems” in order to organize his “own people.” Now, realizing “the priceless value of his middle-class experience,” they will “begin to dissect and examine that way of life as he never has before.” “Everything now has a different meaning and purpose.”

Alinsky instructs his trainees to “return to the suburban scene of your middle class with its variety of organizations from PTAs to League of Women Voters, consumer groups, churches, and clubs. The job is to search out the leaders in these various activities, identify their major issues, find areas of common agreement, and excite their imagination with tactics that can introduce drama and adventure into the tedium of middle class life.”

And a word of Alinsky caution: “Start them easy, don’t scare them off.” When Alinsky’s community organizer moves from organizing the “poor” to organizing the “middle class,” he “discards the rhetoric that always says ‘pig.’ . . . He will view with strategic sensitivity the nature of middle-class behavior with its hangups over rudeness or aggressive, insulting, profane actions. All this and more must be grasped and used to radicalize parts of the middle class.” (Obama never talks like an angry radical. He usually wears a coat and tie, and he speaks in calm, measured tones.)

One in five Los Angeles County residents – nearly 2.2 million people – are receiving public assistance payments or benefits, a level county officials say will rise significantly over the coming months as the fallout from the recession continues.

The percentage of people on county aid already equals the figure at the height of the 2001-03 recession and far exceeds the one in seven who needed help during the economic downturn in the early 1990s and the one in nine assisted in the collapse of the early 1980s.

The rise in welfare recipients in the county is the first sustained uptick since welfare reform under the Clinton administration imposed strict time limits on benefits in 1996.

County officials warn that tens of thousands of additional frustrated job seekers – unemployment in the county currently stands at 9.5% – are expected to seek aid to weather the persistent recession once their other benefits run out.

The total includes those receiving food stamps and general relief as well as other county-administered aid programs, such as in-home health care. The cost – shouldered by the county, state and federal governments – was $334 million a month by the end of last year, according to the latest report by the county’s Department of Public Social Services.

The rising demand has left public assistance offices ill-equipped to deal with the growing multitude of indigent people. In some locations, lines routinely snake hundreds of feet outside entrances.

“We have the highest human service burden of any county in the country in sheer numbers,” said Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky.

“Two million people is the size of some countries; that’s how big our problem is,” he said.

To have reached the point of receiving county aid, recipients usually have little left.

Qualifying for help most often means they already have run out of unemployment insurance and drained their bank accounts and other assets.

In other cases, low-wage workers or those whose hours have been cut can earn so little that they qualify for Medicaid or food stamps.

The steepest increases in need have been in the Pomona Valley, the Lancaster area, the San Fernando Valley and East Los Angeles.

By June 2010, officials estimate, the number of people participating in the county’s general relief program, now at 74,143, will reach 91,000. That would erase 11 years of reductions in the caseload. The program provides $221 monthly to individuals who qualify for no other programs. Roughly 60% of those served are believed to be homeless.

Also by June of next year, the number of people receiving payments through CalWorks, the welfare program for families, is expected to rise to 400,000 from the current 367,173. That would erase three years of reductions.

In a sign of how stressed the economy is, county officials report that just as many applicants are denied as are approved; these denials reflect strict qualifications in place for most programs.

For years, declines in the welfare rolls had been offsetting the costs of steady increases in numbers of people qualifying for health care assistance through Medicaid and other programs. The demand for those programs has been driven by a growing number of senior citizens and increasing numbers of people going without employer-based health and disability insurance.

That welfare and health care demands are increasing at the same time is worrisome to officials.

In an attempt to halt the increases, Miguel Santana, a county deputy chief executive, said he hopes in the coming months to place general relief recipients in jobs or in federally funded programs that provide cash and medical assistance.

“We need to act more aggressively than ever to stem the tide” in general relief, said Santana.

Many of those getting help say they have done everything they can think of to find work.

In the waiting room at the welfare office in Rancho Dominguez, where late last week even the line for a parking space was dozens of cars long, 32-year-old Erlinda Romero held a rolled copy of the Pennysaver, dogeared on pages listing jobs she pursued.

“I can’t get a callback,” she said, noting that training last year to become a medical clerk has not yet yielded a job. Meanwhile, she receives Medicaid benefits and $500 in monthly welfare for herself and four children.

Nearby, 50-year-old Ed Baldwin slumped in his chair waiting for his name to be called to renew his food stamps. He has been unemployed for three years, since being laid off from his job as a mechanic for heavy trucks.

“This is getting scary,” he said. “There are no jobs.”

County officials say they are worried that just as the need for county aid surges, the treasury is dwindling.

Property tax revenue, usually stable, is shrinking for the first time in 13 years.

This comes at a time when the county, the region’s largest employer, has ordered a strict hiring freeze that will include the Department of Public Social Services. The department’s director, Philip Browning, has been ordered to draft a budget for the next fiscal year that is at least 5% less than the current year’s.

Although the federal government is acting to increase food stamp and unemployment insurance benefits, programs that are wholly funded by the county – including general relief – remain static.

The monthly benefit of $221 has not increased for more than a decade, and no one is proposing that it increase now.

“We’ve got to be able to do the basics. We are not going to be able to do it in the same way we have in the past,” said Yaroslavsky.

“If the hiring freeze in effect shuts down an office,” he said, “we are going to have to look at an exemption. But we do not print money in the basement of the county Hall of Administration.”

You can read this article by Los Angeles Times staff writer Garrett Therolf, reporting from Los Angeles, California, in context here:freeinternetpress.com

One in five Los Angeles County residents – nearly 2.2 million people – are receiving public assistance payments or benefits, a level county officials say will rise significantly over the coming months as the fallout from the recession continues.

The percentage of people on county aid already equals the figure at the height of the 2001-03 recession and far exceeds the one in seven who needed help during the economic downturn in the early 1990s and the one in nine assisted in the collapse of the early 1980s.

The rise in welfare recipients in the county is the first sustained uptick since welfare reform under the Clinton administration imposed strict time limits on benefits in 1996.

County officials warn that tens of thousands of additional frustrated job seekers – unemployment in the county currently stands at 9.5% – are expected to seek aid to weather the persistent recession once their other benefits run out.

The total includes those receiving food stamps and general relief as well as other county-administered aid programs, such as in-home health care. The cost – shouldered by the county, state and federal governments – was $334 million a month by the end of last year, according to the latest report by the county’s Department of Public Social Services.

The rising demand has left public assistance offices ill-equipped to deal with the growing multitude of indigent people. In some locations, lines routinely snake hundreds of feet outside entrances.

“We have the highest human service burden of any county in the country in sheer numbers,” said Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky.

“Two million people is the size of some countries; that’s how big our problem is,” he said.

To have reached the point of receiving county aid, recipients usually have little left.

Qualifying for help most often means they already have run out of unemployment insurance and drained their bank accounts and other assets.

In other cases, low-wage workers or those whose hours have been cut can earn so little that they qualify for Medicaid or food stamps.

The steepest increases in need have been in the Pomona Valley, the Lancaster area, the San Fernando Valley and East Los Angeles.

By June 2010, officials estimate, the number of people participating in the county’s general relief program, now at 74,143, will reach 91,000. That would erase 11 years of reductions in the caseload. The program provides $221 monthly to individuals who qualify for no other programs. Roughly 60% of those served are believed to be homeless.

Also by June of next year, the number of people receiving payments through CalWorks, the welfare program for families, is expected to rise to 400,000 from the current 367,173. That would erase three years of reductions.

In a sign of how stressed the economy is, county officials report that just as many applicants are denied as are approved; these denials reflect strict qualifications in place for most programs.

For years, declines in the welfare rolls had been offsetting the costs of steady increases in numbers of people qualifying for health care assistance through Medicaid and other programs. The demand for those programs has been driven by a growing number of senior citizens and increasing numbers of people going without employer-based health and disability insurance.

That welfare and health care demands are increasing at the same time is worrisome to officials.

In an attempt to halt the increases, Miguel Santana, a county deputy chief executive, said he hopes in the coming months to place general relief recipients in jobs or in federally funded programs that provide cash and medical assistance.

“We need to act more aggressively than ever to stem the tide” in general relief, said Santana.

Many of those getting help say they have done everything they can think of to find work.

In the waiting room at the welfare office in Rancho Dominguez, where late last week even the line for a parking space was dozens of cars long, 32-year-old Erlinda Romero held a rolled copy of the Pennysaver, dogeared on pages listing jobs she pursued.

“I can’t get a callback,” she said, noting that training last year to become a medical clerk has not yet yielded a job. Meanwhile, she receives Medicaid benefits and $500 in monthly welfare for herself and four children.

Nearby, 50-year-old Ed Baldwin slumped in his chair waiting for his name to be called to renew his food stamps. He has been unemployed for three years, since being laid off from his job as a mechanic for heavy trucks.

“This is getting scary,” he said. “There are no jobs.”

County officials say they are worried that just as the need for county aid surges, the treasury is dwindling.

Property tax revenue, usually stable, is shrinking for the first time in 13 years.

This comes at a time when the county, the region’s largest employer, has ordered a strict hiring freeze that will include the Department of Public Social Services. The department’s director, Philip Browning, has been ordered to draft a budget for the next fiscal year that is at least 5% less than the current year’s.

Although the federal government is acting to increase food stamp and unemployment insurance benefits, programs that are wholly funded by the county – including general relief – remain static.

The monthly benefit of $221 has not increased for more than a decade, and no one is proposing that it increase now.

“We’ve got to be able to do the basics. We are not going to be able to do it in the same way we have in the past,” said Yaroslavsky.

“If the hiring freeze in effect shuts down an office,” he said, “we are going to have to look at an exemption. But we do not print money in the basement of the county Hall of Administration.”

You can read this article by Los Angeles Times staff writer Garrett Therolf, reporting from Los Angeles, California, in context here:freeinternetpress.com

One in five Los Angeles County residents – nearly 2.2 million people – are receiving public assistance payments or benefits, a level county officials say will rise significantly over the coming months as the fallout from the recession continues.

The percentage of people on county aid already equals the figure at the height of the 2001-03 recession and far exceeds the one in seven who needed help during the economic downturn in the early 1990s and the one in nine assisted in the collapse of the early 1980s.

The rise in welfare recipients in the county is the first sustained uptick since welfare reform under the Clinton administration imposed strict time limits on benefits in 1996.

County officials warn that tens of thousands of additional frustrated job seekers – unemployment in the county currently stands at 9.5% – are expected to seek aid to weather the persistent recession once their other benefits run out.

The total includes those receiving food stamps and general relief as well as other county-administered aid programs, such as in-home health care. The cost – shouldered by the county, state and federal governments – was $334 million a month by the end of last year, according to the latest report by the county’s Department of Public Social Services.

The rising demand has left public assistance offices ill-equipped to deal with the growing multitude of indigent people. In some locations, lines routinely snake hundreds of feet outside entrances.

“We have the highest human service burden of any county in the country in sheer numbers,” said Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky.

“Two million people is the size of some countries; that’s how big our problem is,” he said.

To have reached the point of receiving county aid, recipients usually have little left.

Qualifying for help most often means they already have run out of unemployment insurance and drained their bank accounts and other assets.

In other cases, low-wage workers or those whose hours have been cut can earn so little that they qualify for Medicaid or food stamps.

The steepest increases in need have been in the Pomona Valley, the Lancaster area, the San Fernando Valley and East Los Angeles.

By June 2010, officials estimate, the number of people participating in the county’s general relief program, now at 74,143, will reach 91,000. That would erase 11 years of reductions in the caseload. The program provides $221 monthly to individuals who qualify for no other programs. Roughly 60% of those served are believed to be homeless.

Also by June of next year, the number of people receiving payments through CalWorks, the welfare program for families, is expected to rise to 400,000 from the current 367,173. That would erase three years of reductions.

In a sign of how stressed the economy is, county officials report that just as many applicants are denied as are approved; these denials reflect strict qualifications in place for most programs.

For years, declines in the welfare rolls had been offsetting the costs of steady increases in numbers of people qualifying for health care assistance through Medicaid and other programs. The demand for those programs has been driven by a growing number of senior citizens and increasing numbers of people going without employer-based health and disability insurance.

That welfare and health care demands are increasing at the same time is worrisome to officials.

In an attempt to halt the increases, Miguel Santana, a county deputy chief executive, said he hopes in the coming months to place general relief recipients in jobs or in federally funded programs that provide cash and medical assistance.

“We need to act more aggressively than ever to stem the tide” in general relief, said Santana.

Many of those getting help say they have done everything they can think of to find work.

In the waiting room at the welfare office in Rancho Dominguez, where late last week even the line for a parking space was dozens of cars long, 32-year-old Erlinda Romero held a rolled copy of the Pennysaver, dogeared on pages listing jobs she pursued.

“I can’t get a callback,” she said, noting that training last year to become a medical clerk has not yet yielded a job. Meanwhile, she receives Medicaid benefits and $500 in monthly welfare for herself and four children.

Nearby, 50-year-old Ed Baldwin slumped in his chair waiting for his name to be called to renew his food stamps. He has been unemployed for three years, since being laid off from his job as a mechanic for heavy trucks.

“This is getting scary,” he said. “There are no jobs.”

County officials say they are worried that just as the need for county aid surges, the treasury is dwindling.

Property tax revenue, usually stable, is shrinking for the first time in 13 years.

This comes at a time when the county, the region’s largest employer, has ordered a strict hiring freeze that will include the Department of Public Social Services. The department’s director, Philip Browning, has been ordered to draft a budget for the next fiscal year that is at least 5% less than the current year’s.

Although the federal government is acting to increase food stamp and unemployment insurance benefits, programs that are wholly funded by the county – including general relief – remain static.

The monthly benefit of $221 has not increased for more than a decade, and no one is proposing that it increase now.

“We’ve got to be able to do the basics. We are not going to be able to do it in the same way we have in the past,” said Yaroslavsky.

“If the hiring freeze in effect shuts down an office,” he said, “we are going to have to look at an exemption. But we do not print money in the basement of the county Hall of Administration.”

You can read this article by Los Angeles Times staff writer Garrett Therolf, reporting from Los Angeles, California, in context here:freeinternetpress.com

One in five Los Angeles County residents – nearly 2.2 million people – are receiving public assistance payments or benefits, a level county officials say will rise significantly over the coming months as the fallout from the recession continues.

The percentage of people on county aid already equals the figure at the height of the 2001-03 recession and far exceeds the one in seven who needed help during the economic downturn in the early 1990s and the one in nine assisted in the collapse of the early 1980s.

The rise in welfare recipients in the county is the first sustained uptick since welfare reform under the Clinton administration imposed strict time limits on benefits in 1996.

County officials warn that tens of thousands of additional frustrated job seekers – unemployment in the county currently stands at 9.5% – are expected to seek aid to weather the persistent recession once their other benefits run out.

The total includes those receiving food stamps and general relief as well as other county-administered aid programs, such as in-home health care. The cost – shouldered by the county, state and federal governments – was $334 million a month by the end of last year, according to the latest report by the county’s Department of Public Social Services.

The rising demand has left public assistance offices ill-equipped to deal with the growing multitude of indigent people. In some locations, lines routinely snake hundreds of feet outside entrances.

“We have the highest human service burden of any county in the country in sheer numbers,” said Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky.

“Two million people is the size of some countries; that’s how big our problem is,” he said.

To have reached the point of receiving county aid, recipients usually have little left.

Qualifying for help most often means they already have run out of unemployment insurance and drained their bank accounts and other assets.

In other cases, low-wage workers or those whose hours have been cut can earn so little that they qualify for Medicaid or food stamps.

The steepest increases in need have been in the Pomona Valley, the Lancaster area, the San Fernando Valley and East Los Angeles.

By June 2010, officials estimate, the number of people participating in the county’s general relief program, now at 74,143, will reach 91,000. That would erase 11 years of reductions in the caseload. The program provides $221 monthly to individuals who qualify for no other programs. Roughly 60% of those served are believed to be homeless.

Also by June of next year, the number of people receiving payments through CalWorks, the welfare program for families, is expected to rise to 400,000 from the current 367,173. That would erase three years of reductions.

In a sign of how stressed the economy is, county officials report that just as many applicants are denied as are approved; these denials reflect strict qualifications in place for most programs.

For years, declines in the welfare rolls had been offsetting the costs of steady increases in numbers of people qualifying for health care assistance through Medicaid and other programs. The demand for those programs has been driven by a growing number of senior citizens and increasing numbers of people going without employer-based health and disability insurance.

That welfare and health care demands are increasing at the same time is worrisome to officials.

In an attempt to halt the increases, Miguel Santana, a county deputy chief executive, said he hopes in the coming months to place general relief recipients in jobs or in federally funded programs that provide cash and medical assistance.

“We need to act more aggressively than ever to stem the tide” in general relief, said Santana.

Many of those getting help say they have done everything they can think of to find work.

In the waiting room at the welfare office in Rancho Dominguez, where late last week even the line for a parking space was dozens of cars long, 32-year-old Erlinda Romero held a rolled copy of the Pennysaver, dogeared on pages listing jobs she pursued.

“I can’t get a callback,” she said, noting that training last year to become a medical clerk has not yet yielded a job. Meanwhile, she receives Medicaid benefits and $500 in monthly welfare for herself and four children.

Nearby, 50-year-old Ed Baldwin slumped in his chair waiting for his name to be called to renew his food stamps. He has been unemployed for three years, since being laid off from his job as a mechanic for heavy trucks.

“This is getting scary,” he said. “There are no jobs.”

County officials say they are worried that just as the need for county aid surges, the treasury is dwindling.

Property tax revenue, usually stable, is shrinking for the first time in 13 years.

This comes at a time when the county, the region’s largest employer, has ordered a strict hiring freeze that will include the Department of Public Social Services. The department’s director, Philip Browning, has been ordered to draft a budget for the next fiscal year that is at least 5% less than the current year’s.

Although the federal government is acting to increase food stamp and unemployment insurance benefits, programs that are wholly funded by the county – including general relief – remain static.

The monthly benefit of $221 has not increased for more than a decade, and no one is proposing that it increase now.

“We’ve got to be able to do the basics. We are not going to be able to do it in the same way we have in the past,” said Yaroslavsky.

“If the hiring freeze in effect shuts down an office,” he said, “we are going to have to look at an exemption. But we do not print money in the basement of the county Hall of Administration.”

You can read this article by Los Angeles Times staff writer Garrett Therolf, reporting from Los Angeles, California, in context here:freeinternetpress.com