Yesterday I wrote about my 2023-2024 reading list and today Goodreads just announced their Best Books for 2023.

Great to see one of the books I read this year as the winner for the best non-fiction category. ‘Poverty, by America’ by Matthew Desmond is a great book, and I probably need to write a review soon.

There are so many great insights in this book. Right from the start, in the Prologue, he says, “America’s poverty is not for lack of resources. We lack something else (Page7)”

Then in page 28 he wrote the following, “When welfare was administrated through the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, almost all of its funds were used to provide single-parent families with cash assistance. But when President Bill Clinton reformed welfare in 1996, replacing the old model with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), he transformed the program into a block grant that gives states considerable leeway in deciding how to distribute the money. As a result, states have come up with rather creatives ways to spend TANF dollars. Nationwide, for every dollar budgeted for TANF in 2020, poor families directly received just 22 cents. Only Kentucky and the District of Columbia spent over half of their TANF on basic cash assistance.”

About how Mississippi used the TANF, he wrote in page 29, “A 389-page audit released in 2020 found that money overseen by the Mississippi Department of Human Services (DHS) and intended for the state’s poorest families was used to hire an evangelical worship singer who perfumed at rallies and church concerts; to purchase a Nissan Armada, Chevrolet Silverado, and Ford F-250 for the head of a local nonprofit and two of her family members; and even pay the former NFL quarterback Brett Favre $1.1 million for speeches he never gave. (Favre later returned the money.) There’s more. DHS contractors squandered TANF dollars on college football tickets, a private school, a twelve-week fitness camp that state legislators could attend free of charge ($1.3 million), and a donation to the University of Southern Mississippi for a wellness center ($5 million). Welfare funds also went to a ministry run by former professional wrestler Ted DiBiase – the Million Dollar Man and the author of the memoir Every Man Has His Price – for speeches and wrestling events. DiBiase’s price was $2.1 million.”

I think what we lack is compassion.

You can read more about the issue in Mississippi here. https://www2.osa.ms.gov/news/auditor-demands-repayment-of-misspent-welfare-money/

• Ed’s Notes