great piece vennochi. speaking about poverty, lack of jobs et al, i'll ask this question of both candidates again . what is their opinion on whether WAL-MART with it's low prices and jobs should or should not be allowed inside the boston city limits. as of right now, it's being shunned on the whims of one man, the blithering nitwit bagman mayor and his toadies like peter meade and the entirely gutless boston city council with some help from neighborhood suck-ups like horace small and silence from the majority of the community including the 10 point coalition. we've come all this way so lets see whether either of these 2 senatorial candidates has the stones to answer this important question that demands a response. my vote for either of these 2 depends on what i hear or don't hear. ma

It's time to lift the poor out of poverty. Ted Kennedy a champion of the poor, what did he do for them Joan besides handing them tax payer money. Welfare has destroyed people, need education, NO, need training, No. This program incentives bad behavior. the program needs to be reformed. Your need help, fine, you will trained, get an education, do community service and be drug free. If you have a child, we will help, no more money for more children.

Brown will offer tax cuts. Eliminate all family planning and purpose vouchers so kids can attend Catholic schools. Stop all public transport in the area including school busses. Keep the problem confined.

propose

This country can afford to hand billions in foreign aid to countries like Pakistan. No one ever got a simple list of countries getting our tax dollars that I have seen. Politicians debate esoteric issues meaningless to most Americans. Ms Venochi deserves high praise for this essay. It would be so simple and easy to generate a system that injects energy into upraising the humanity America is storing in its ghettos. At the risk of exposing my right wing nuttiness, may I suggest that Obamaphones and food stamps used to buy cigaretts and booze may not be the answer? That $50 billion we donate to Pakistan that houses the Taliban headquarters would be very useful here in America. We have great Americans with the education and training who could come up with something better than the war on poverty. We do not need a war on anything. We need new ideas and unique solutions from the same people whose minds created the technical miracles we now enjoy. How can we make solving poverty a profitable business for investors? If politicians could buy GM and Chrysler, why could they not fund a new company whose sole means of profitability would be determined by measuring the growth it produces by managing structural changes that reduce or eliminate crime, increase real educational success in schools and placement of real companies that manufacture everyday goods that are now Chinese and create islands of safety in these poverty pits? Is this more fantastic than sending a spaceship to Mars?

Why does Warren need Ogletree to facilitate a discussion? She can't handle the discussion herself? She hid behind Patrick in a news conference as he spoke for her over the Cherokee issue. Now she hides behind Ogletree? She is an embarrasment to women and unfit to represent Mass. in the Senate.We can do better.

Poor we don't have poor in this country. Obviously some folks aren't reading the comment section. We have leeches and lazy people. Anyone who wants to can be a millionaire. You don't need luck. You don't need to be rich. You just need to work hard and embrace the free market. It's every man for himself you losers that's our brave new world of libertarian justice. Of course as they say nothing is free, including the free market so try to scrape up some equity money from the suckers out there.

Rev River's concern about the Black Community's is absolutely right in putting a light on the problem of poverty. However he should know that most of Elizabeth Warren's academic life was involved in exposing the poverty producers for both black and white. She gave unequivocal evidence it was scamming banks that put Afro American mortgage lenders disproportionately into sub prime loans that blew up once the pyramid of speculation with them came to a dead end in 2008 under the Bush administration. Ms. Vennochi must know that the Federal Consumer Protection Agency provides protection for those that can ill afford to lose their hard earned dollars. Prof Warren, in fact, is a champion for those who fall prey to an unlevel playing field. She has been recognized for her efforts to help stop the slide of many into poverty. Sen Brown on the other hand thinks such gambling with other people's money is just fine and also thinks our wayward financial institutions should even have less regulation so they can do even more of it. t is past time that Sen Brown shows that what he believes is actually a poverty producer. He sponsors one or two job fairs and thinks this is the way to erase faulty economic structure. Nice photo op but little elbow grease for eradicating financial ruin. Jobs can not be produced when large financial institutions just shift paper around and don't produce any usable products for the Nation. Elizabeth Warren has called for the resignation of Jamie Dimond from the Federal Reserve Board and advocates for a modern Glass-Steagall Act. Sen Brown wants to continue what got us into this mess. So let the debate begin. I

I am Scott Brown and I approve this message.

if you choose not to get educated, not to get trained, not graduate from high school, have a baby at 16, what are your chances, very low. we can give them all the money they need to survive, it does nothing to really help them in life.

http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/hotproperty/archives/2008/02/clintons_drive.htmlhttp://articles.latimes.com/1999/may/31/news/mn-42807

I'm glad someone has the courage to say the words "poverty" and "poor" and "race" (without the card attached), considering that 1 out of every 7 Americans is on Food Stamps! Talk about burying your head in the sand!

I look forward to hearing more about the candidates' responses to this invitation. I will be particularly interested to hear Senator Brown explain how his longstanding support for Voter ID laws, which the NAACP has denounced as the "heart of the modern block the vote campaign," would "improve the quality of life for poor black and brown citizens." http://wp.me/p28tPp-48

This is a problem, but it is not one-sided. 1. These communities need to look at what within themselves they can do to improve. How many of these children are in one parent households? What support are these children getting from their parents to pursue their eduction? Is education a priority in the home? 2. The government does need to help, but I would reward based on education somehow. If it is made a priority in the home or community, some sort of aid can be given. If someone who has shown dedication wants to move ahead in education, but is unable for some reason, aid should be given. I would start with after school programs at schools in these poorer communities, maybe jointly with a big brother and big sister, to give kids a place to go to unwind, do homework, hear from adults who were able to rise above their current situation. The government, by itself, cannot fix this. However, some people who have been born into poverty, have, by themselves, risen out of it. I would still advocate for some level of government assistance though.

HHKitchener2- Illegals don't vote. They stay as far as they can away from anywhere where there's a possibility they may pick up a felony rap. Especially a federal crime. You can jump up and down and create this stuff up from thin air but you can't generate your own facts. They just don't vote. It just wouldn't make any sense. There is no reason for voter ID laws and you know it. Or you should.

Your ideas are all ready to go into action. All of these suggestions are good ones but they cost money. You didn't invent this stuff. These ideas have been around for decades. And they have all worked. It just takes some political will to re-implement them and it takes money. Money to hire the after-school workers, money to generate the volunteers, teachers etc. If the services are available then they will get used. How do you measure if parents are making education a priority? It can't simply be signing up kids for the programs you proposed here. You will have to hire social workers to work with the parents. Many of them need some pretty serious hand-holding to make this kind of thing work. That also takes money. Is the Senator willing to make a commitment in this regard? I seriously doubt it but I'll be listening to what he and his challenger have to say on the subject. That's what we want to know.

And you think they haven't preached against out-of-wedlock births, anti-education culture and the gang culture? You need to reread Oliver Twist.

I had no idea that only black and brown people were poor. I will have to tell my poor white friends. Seems like poor blacks in Boston get free tutoring...$65 per hour for my kid (not that I can afford it). Free summer camp...$300 per week...ditto. Full scholarships to college if they want them...me, staring down a probable mortgage sized debt. The help is there, but you can't force someone to want it. We also make it not worth it to succeed for some, because they will lose all the free: healthcare, daycare, food stamps, summer camp, tutoring, subsidized rent. They feel like if they do a little better and lose all that, they will be worse off (and they aren't wrong). Beggars didn't used to have the luxury of being choosy, but some of these poor kids are going to Red Sox games and having "once in a lifetime" experiences that the working class can't afford, so why would they want to be one of us? Singling people out based on race creates hate....and suggests that they are powerless because of their pigment and they should be offended that the minister feels that way about their race.