Focus on Poverty

Re “Plight of Poor Becomes Issue in 2000 Race,” Aug. 17:

Have we learned nothing from one of the biggest debacles our country was duped into--LBJ’s War on Poverty? When the government hands out money, the work ethic is destroyed.

Self-esteem must be earned, it cannot be handed out. Job training and education must be earned and made available only after people have shown that they can reliably show up for work and get along with their fellow workers.

George W. Bush hits the nail on the head when he states that issues of personal responsibility and the decline of the two-parent family are responsible for the persistence of poverty. The sole purpose of any and every antipoverty program should be to get people employed.

JOHN SMITH

Burbank

* If we are to do anything about poverty, we ought to have our facts straight, particularly about what has been tried and why it worked or didn’t. Your story says, “These new initiatives depart from the War on Poverty, which lacked the emphasis on personal responsibility and focused much more on channeling the needy into government programs directed from Washington.”

Not so. The central effort of the War on Poverty, the Community Action Program, was based on participation of those needing the opportunities made available, and the funds were administered through thousands of local agencies. The trouble was that the decisions they made were not always in accord with the desires of existing national and local power centers. That is one major reason the program collapsed. The other was that all this takes a good deal of public money, a fact that neither President Clinton nor his opposition nor most of the current candidates are willing to recognize.

ROBERT A. LEVINE

Former Asst. Dir. for Planning

Office of Economic Opportunity

Los Angeles