{"id":2167,"date":"2004-07-21T09:59:12","date_gmt":"2004-07-21T14:59:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/2167.html"},"modified":"2004-07-21T09:59:12","modified_gmt":"2004-07-21T14:59:12","slug":"no-home-no-computer-but-an-online-resource","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/no-home-no-computer-but-an-online-resource\/","title":{"rendered":"No home, no computer, but an online resource"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nine years ago, then-Speaker Newt Gingrich demonstrated his legendary outside-the-box thinking by floating an idea<\/a> to give families in poverty a tax credit to by a laptop computer.<\/p>\n

“Maybe that’s expensive, maybe we can’t do it, but [we should send] . . . any signal that we can send to the poorest Americans that says, ‘We’re going into a twenty-first-century, third-wave information age, and so are you, and we want to carry you with us.'”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It was vintage Gingrich. He didn’t want to offer resources to low-income families for health care, housing, or education, but he wanted them to have laptops. The suggestion was widely panned and quickly forgotten.<\/p>\n

But, as David Sirota noticed<\/a> yesterday, bizarre thinking like this has a way of sticking around.<\/p>\n

Instead of reversing massive cuts to housing<\/a> and job training<\/a> he has proposed, the President apparently thinks the way to help the homeless is to set up a website for them<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here’s an excerpt from the Dept. of Labor press release today<\/a>:<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON — The Department of Labor (DOL) today launched a Web site to help America’s homeless find jobs through mainstream as well as targeted training, education and placement services and to provide a vital link to government-wide resources. “This Web page furthers the Administration’s commitment to helping the homeless, including homeless veterans,” said U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If Bush administration officials want us to stop making fun of them, they’ll have to stop doing dumb things.<\/p>\n

Does the Dept. of Labor initiative come with a coupon for Internet cafes? And come to think of it, how will the homeless learn of this new website? Maybe Chao could email them the press release?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nine years ago, then-Speaker Newt Gingrich demonstrated his legendary outside-the-box thinking by floating an idea to give families in poverty a tax credit to by a laptop computer. “Maybe that’s expensive, maybe we can’t do it, but [we should send] . . . any signal that we can send to the poorest Americans that says, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2167\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}