The Social Welfare Narrative

Welfare Narrative

New Message: Poor are to Blame

1) Poverty: Personal Failing2) Social Welfare Programs: Destroys Families and Creates Poverty

Welfare Narrative

Promoting Anti-Welfare MessageConservatives pursued a multi-pronged public relations strategy to promote

this message:

1) Books2) Use of Catch Phrases3) Personal Stories and Images4) Think Tanks5) De-Funding Left Opponents/Academia

Welfare Narrative

Personal Stories and Images: Clarabel Ventura

Who is Clarabel Ventura?After he arrest for child abuse in 1994, the media reported the following about Clarabel Ventura. She is:

1) Twenty-Six2) Mother of Five (Five Different Fathers)3) Four Months Pregnant4) Addicted to Crack (or Recovering)5) “had been in DDS pipeline since 1987…”

Welfare Narrative

What was Clarabel Ventura Charged with?Burning her 4 year son Ernesto’s hands with boiling water.

The Boston Globe reported: “The boy - who police say was forced to put his hands in a pot of boiling liquid several weeks ago - was left in a locked room on a mattress soaked with his own blood, urine and feces, police said, while his five brothers and sisters lived in squalor.”

Welfare Narrative

Conditions in the Ventura Home: When the police arrived they discovered to Ernesto locked in a room without

food and…

As the Boston Herald reported: “His five siblings, ranging in age from 9 months to 7 years, were wandering over floors strewn with trash and beer cans.”

Protocols of Persuasion

Conditions in the Ventura Home:

Apparently, the Boston Globe reported: “Ventura's former neighbors on Lattimore Court recalled her as an apparently neglectful mother who frequently screamed at her children and locked them in their bedrooms. They said they had seen her children sent on nightly runs to bum for cigarettes and food.”

Welfare Narrative

What does Clarabel Ventura Story have to do with Welfare? She was a product of Welfare, and its destructive influence.

After Clarabel’s arrest we learned the following about her family:

1) Mother had been on Welfare since 1968 2) Mother had 17 children, in public housing3) 14 of her children were now on welfare4) Has 74 Grandchildren, virtually all on welfare5) 15 Great-grand children, again, mostly on welfare

Welfare Narrative

More About the Ventura Family:

We also learned, as the Boston Globe reported that: “Maribel, a daughter with one child of her own, told the story of each of her siblings, how many children they had and what kind of assistance they were on. She spoke the lexicon of the permanent welfare class, serving up an alphabet soup of funding sources and agencies like DSS, AFDC, SSI, SSDI, WIC and EAEDC.”

Work?“She had a harder time explaining why she and her brothers and sisters don't work.” Most are disabled.

Welfare Narrative

More About the Ventura Family: According to the Globe, the entire family was unemployed, at home all day,

living off the system, while their children watched MTV in the middle of a school day.

What Are the Costs to Society to Support the Ventura Family?The Globe calculated that…

“the welfare recipients in this extended family of about 100 could be costing state and federal taxpayers from $ 750,000 to $ 1 million a year…”

Welfare Narrative

So, What does Clarabel Ventura Story have to do with Welfare?

Globe: They are a “statistical abberrations” in the words of a state official.

But, nonetheless, such generational dependence “is increasingly becoming the norm…”

Welfare Narrative

At the Same Time, a Similar Story of Abuse Emerges in Chicago:After raiding an apartment in search of drugs, the police, reports the

Washington Post found:

“19 children, ranging in age from 1 to 14, living in a litter-strewn, cockroach-infested apartment where they ate scraps of meat off the floor.”

Williams: “Race, Rat Bites and Unfit Mothers”

Policy Implications

Clarabel Ventura Story: Clarabel Ventura’s story is widely reported, and cited on the floor of the Massachusetts Senate, as well as by William Weld at American Enterprise Institute conference in Washington.

Williams: “Race, Rat Bites and Unfit Mothers”

Policy Implications

Chicago StoryChicago Widely discussed in Washington policy circles.

Example: ABC World News broadcasts scenes from Chicago while

reporting on Clinton’s Welfare reform initiative.

Other outlets returned to Chicago story when Gingrich proposes GOP welfare reforms. (p. 264) (Chicago-Tribune, Dec 28, 1994 at 8-C.)