The Great Welfare Empire Conspiracy - Page 03

The Welfare Game Interfered with the Welfare Empire's Effort to Properly "Educate" the Public

In the fall of 1980, the APWA was riding high on the waves of unprecedented welfare expansion. Its leaders had become sophisticated propagandists. In its November newsletter, the APWA interviewed its treasurer, Jerome Chapman, who was also the welfare commissioner of Texas. The article concluded thus:

Chapman notes that administrators have only just begun the task of educating the public so that it understands and supports public welfare. He believes usually overlooked but potential allies in this endeavor are business and industry. He notes that certain industries benefit directly from welfare programs, e.g., food chains from food stamps and the medical profession from Medicaid. And businesses that sell the necessities of life, such as clothing, rental housing, and utilities would find higher benefit levels in programs such as aid to families with dependent children (AFDC) to their advantage.

In Texas, one member of the commissioner's staff spends part of his time helping corporations understand how welfare programs work. Chapman believes that once corporations are won over, they can be enlisted to help sell the public on the welfare system.

Reagan Not Considered a Threat to Welfare Empire's Goals

APWA did not consider the election of Ronald Reagan in November of 1980 to be a real threat to its power because its leaders knew that they could push their programs through a democratic Congress. And this they did. Back in the early eighties, the public may have been fed a chorus of complaints about the Reagan administration's so-called brutal cuts in welfare, but in reality, from 1980 to 1983 the total cost of the top five welfare programs rose 37%, from $42.8 billion to $58.6 billion.

Game Popularity Scared Welfare Big Wigs

But APWA's leaders did feel threatened by the game, by the publicity it was receiving, and by its growing popularity. Once Ron and I had the first copies of the game in our hands in October of 1980, we took one to the Annapolis Evening Capital newspaper, and the editors ran a front page story on it. The Associated Press picked it up and made it front page news across the country. After that, Ron and I were asked to appear on several nationwide radio and television talk shows including The Donahue Show. The publicity generated calls for the game to toy and gift stores, and these retailers turned to their manufacturer's representatives to locate the game, and these, in turn, ordered the game from us. We were well on our way to establishing a successful marketing network across the country.

The press just kept getting better. New York Daily News reporter Edward J. Fay quoted a Macy's worker in a full page article, "Everyone's asking for it, but we don't have it yet." Giftware News called it the "most original game of the decade if not the century," and wrote of "overwhelming support from major metropolitan department store customers." The Donahue producers had to hire a new person to handle all the calls for the game after we appeared on his ten minute segment of The Today Show.

It was about this time that the welfare empire potentates determined that the game Public Assistance-Why Bother Working for a Living? had to be removed from the marketplace of ideas.

In a speech before the National Association of Broadcasters, President Jimmy Carter's welfare queen, Patricia Roberts Harris, spoke out against the game. Fearful of the effect of its continued sale on welfare empire expansion policy, she urged the media not to give it any more publicity.

Meanwhile, privately, other leaders of the welfare empire worked on the specifics of the plan to ban the game nationwide. Peter Slavin, the editor of APWA's monthly newsletter, was one of those leaders. He wrote in his notes as he helped prepare the plan, "Game could be very harmful . . . Game will reinforce moves to cut public assistance . . . Will create backlash toward social service programs as a whole and welfare in particular." Slavin and APWA's executive director, Edward Weaver, based their nationwide plan to ban it on the successful efforts of Maryland officials who worked with the NAACP and other welfare "rights" groups to keep the game off shelves there, and upon a plan already implemented by the National Organization for Women (NOW). After speaking with Maryland welfare officials and officials from NOW, Slavin wrote in his notes, "Yes, good chance of organized opposition being successful . . . Opponents need to contact stores directly, bring economic pressure."

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