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Won’t Somebody Please Help Frances Fox Piven?

By on 1.26.11 @ 6:08AM

Glenn Beck is the least of her problems.

Big news! Glenn Beck has discovered the 1960s writings of Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, the husband-and-wife team that gave birth to the Welfare Rights Movement and plotted the bankruptcy of the federal government. Cloward died in 2001 but Piven, now 78, is still teaching at the City University of New York Graduate Center and writing manifestos for The Nation.

Cloward and Piven — ah, those names. To me they have always been an abstraction, some mysterious academics closeted away somewhere on the West Side of Manhattan, directing the armies of the poor to the next barricade from their cloistered hideaway. And oh my, were they effective. I wrote a book about crime in the 1980s and a considerable number of articles about the welfare system in the 1990s and Cloward and Piven were all over the place. To me it’s almost startling to find they are real people — just as Piven, who is now receiving death threats for her writings, must be astonished to find there are actually people out there paying attention to what she has to say.

Cloward seems almost admirable in some respects. He was an ensign in the Navy during World War II and reenlisted in the Army during the Korean War, but then he got into social work at Columbia University and ended up wallowing in the mires of academic sociology. In 1961, he and Lloyd Ohlin, another academic all-star, wrote Delinquency and Opportunity: A Theory of Delinquent Gangs, which became square one of the “new approach to crime” that dominated the 1960s. Cloward and Ohlin had a simple thesis — criminals, particularly juvenile delinquents, were just like everybody else: ambitious, red-blooded Americans intent on success. Their only problem was that they were poor and had no legitimate outlets for their ambition. A street kid joining a gang and engaged in petty crime was no different from an affluent suburban youth joining the Young Rotarians and selling hot dogs at a football game. Both were expressing their ambition through the career paths open to them. Crime and delinquency were defined by economic circumstances, or — as it came to be expressed succinctly — “poverty causes crime.”

The principal corollary to this theory was that the worst thing to do was to put such youth in jail. They only picked up the mores of serious offenders and became hardened criminals. The argument became the foundation of the “deprisonization” movement, which became our national crime policy when Ohlin became a director of President Johnson’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice and lead author of The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, published in 1967. Billed as the “Blueprint to Banish Crime Forever,” the famous “Crime Report” recommended: a) ending poverty, b) improving education, c) eliminating racial inequality, and d) letting almost everybody out of jail. The deprisonization worked so effectively that, as James Q. Wilson would point out in Thinking About Crime (1975), by 1970 crime rates had tripled yet there were fewer people in prison.

The ensuing crime wave became perhaps America’s longest and most brutal undeclared war. I once calculated that if murder rates had remained where they were in 1965 — and where they have descended once again since we returned to law enforcement in the 1990s — 500,000 Americans would not have lost their lives. Crime so dominated the national consciousness that it cost Michael Dukakis the 1988 election when he gave a mealy-mouthed answer to Bernard Shaw’s question, “What would you do if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered?” (He said he’d call an international drug conference.) It was the #2 item in the Contract With America when the Republicans took over Congress in 1994. Today, with crime rates back to their early 1960s levels — despite 9 percent unemployment — the days when theories such as those in Delinquency and Opportunity nearly paralyzed the nation are almost forgotten.

DELINQUENCY AND OPPORTUNITY was indeed a theory. Throughout the book, Cloward and Ohlin barely mentioned a single individual delinquent (although Ohlin had worked as a parole advisor in Illinois). The authors presented no statistics, no research, no real people. It was all theory — “Criminals are just like you, they just have less opportunity.” The personal predilections of criminals toward violence or risk-taking played no part. That unchecked crime turned poor neighborhoods into war zones, that the poor themselves were the principal victims of crime, that crime and its disruption limited the opportunities of thousands of other people — all were overlooked. But it made a good theory.

In 1966 Cloward and Piven had married and moved on to write “The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty,” the article in The Nation that 45 years later has captured Glenn Beck’s attention. Cloward and Piven suggested a simple, if cynical, strategy for “ending poverty.” The welfare law — the notorious AFDC (Aid to Financially Dependent Children) — was filled with special allowances for furniture, clothing, and back-to-school expenses that nobody ever claimed. Millions of people were eligible for welfare but never applied. All you had to do, after all, was have a baby out of wedlock. Many states refused to apply these laws while others kept them hidden from applicants. But a full-scale national effort to get everybody signed up for welfare would bankrupt the system, paving the way — in good Marxist fashion — for something much better. The “Cloward-Piven Strategy,” later expanded into Regulating the Poor (1971), became the foundation of the Welfare Rights Movement, which Cloward and Piven founded in 1968 and whose main accomplishment was to get millions of unwed mothers to apply for government assistance, so that the term “single-parent home” not only entered the lexicon but became a national phenomenon.

I have a bit of personal experience in this story. In the summer of 1969 I went to Alabama to work for the Southern Rural Research Project, an outgrowth of the civil rights movement, which was promoting Welfare Rights in the South. I had been in Mississippi during the Freedom Summer of 1964 and wanted to go back. I was a bit disappointed to find that the emphasis had switched from voting rights to welfare rights, but participated all the same. It was a good experience

I learned, most of all, that welfare was a very destructive system. I saw that almost every teenage girl in town already had a baby but was living at home, turning the baby over to the grandmother while continuing a relatively carefree teenage life. After the second or third child, however, the grandmother would kick her out and she would marry the father of her most recent child. That was how families were formed. I later found by reading Herbert Gutman’s The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom and several other books that this pattern can be traced all the way back through slavery and into African cultural patterns. “Children of fortune” (i.e., children of unknown fathers) were commonplace in slavery and remain so in Africa today. Yet families do form. Eighty percent of the families in Gutman’s plantation records had two parents and the rate of two-parent families among African-Americans living in Harlem in the 1920s was close to 90 percent.

What the welfare system did was interrupt this process. By the time a teenage girl had her second or third child she didn’t need to marry her boyfriend — she could go on welfare. In fact she would be penalized if she didn’t. She would lose her welfare benefits, her Medicaid card, and the general solicitations of the state. Walter Williams is perfectly correct in saying the welfare system destroyed the black family.

I learned other things as well. I learned about human nature. In fact, I always date the beginnings of my conservative leanings to a sunny day that summer when I walked into a cotton field to tell an elderly black man and woman who were tending their crop about the wonders of the welfare system. They were old enough to qualify for Old Age Assistance, I said, and their low income was probably sufficient. Therefore they should accompany me down to the welfare office to apply. They stood there nodding and smiling in that silent way until I suddenly realized the old man had tears in his eyes. It hit me like a thunderbolt. This couple had worked all their lives to achieve what they valued most — their independence and self-respect — and now I was telling them they should give it up to become wards of the government. I walked out of that field thinking, “I wonder if I’m doing the right thing down here.” It has been a long journey but it started right there.

SO I CONGRATULATE the late Richard Cloward and the late Leonard Ohlin and Frances Fox Piven for all the wonderful theorizing they have accomplished in their careers. Cloward did try once to put his ideas into practice. In 1963 he founded Mobilization for Youth, a government-funded organization dedicated to implementing his theories about delinquency and opportunity. Mobilization for Youth lasted about a decade but in 1968 spawned MFY Legal Services, a federally funded employment opportunity for lawyers that still functions on the Lower East Side of New York long after Mobilization for Youth’s original intentions have been forgotten.

I could even feel sorry for Piven, finding herself suddenly the object of wrathful attention after years of living in the cocoon of academia. She is, after all, 78 years old. But then I read what she has been writing recently in The Nation:

An effective movement of the unemployed [in America] will have to look something like the strikes and riots that have spread across Greece in response to the austerity measures forced on the Greek government by the European Union or like the student protests that recently spread with lightning speed across England in response to the prospect of greatly increased school fees.

Now I know Piven really doesn’t mean what she’s saying here. She doesn’t want to see the kind of civil disobedience riots where a 34-year-old pregnant mother was burned to death when Greek rioters set fire to a bank — at least not in her neighborhood. Riots don’t involve real people, any more than juvenile delinquency involves real juveniles or welfare rights involves real mothers being urged to spurn wedlock and marry the state. These are just Marxist abstractions — “the masses” — waiting to be moved around the chessboard by academic strategists intent on creating a perfect world.

Still it’s nice to know that Piven finally realizes there are actual flesh-and-blood people out there reading what she has to say.

Welcome to the real world, Frances.

About the Author

William Tucker is news editor for RealClearEnergy.org.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (115) |

Deborah D | 1.26.11 @ 7:27AM

Wow! I get sick and tired of the combination of academic and politician that continue to use our great country as a guinea pig in their outrageous experiments. The combination of academic and politician and businessman and politician always ends badly for the American people. Just look around.

ENOUGH ROPE| 1.26.11 @ 3:59PM

Deborah, you identified the irresponsibility of theorists who seek enactment of their theories in government policies and programs without empirical evidence to justify the expectation of truly good results for the individual and society. Worse, there are theorists like Cloward and Piven who want Marxist results.

A person's occupational background as an academic, politician, businessman or any other occupation is, I believe, less important to their capacity to advise or to govern. Instead, in addition to their being competent, it is most important that they are wise, virtuous, and practice what is true, just, and agape. To discern, to follow, or to vote for those who seek influence or office does require our citizens to become citizens by being curious and perspicacious. Ah! There's the rub! Until the monopoly of our public school system is replaced in large part by religious based schools that are chosen by parents with vouchers, it is unlikely that our citizens will acquire the values and ability to think that are needed to counter the degeneration of our culture.

As for Ms. Piven and others like her, they would become happier if they read the Bible more often than their thinking about schemes to control people.

Jeamar37| 1.26.11 @ 10:50PM

Must religious school be paid for by vouchers (provided by taxpayers) likely to be any better than those schools paid for by their adherents? And are not parents rather than schools the logical source for children to learn values? Many nonreligious people have personal values equal to or superior to many religious people. What religion are we talking about anyhow?) And we all probably know some religiously educated people who cannot think critically about anything that is not "Bible-based" or "Koran-based" et. cet. All that being said, I agree with the criticism in the article of Piven et. al.

Nick| 1.26.11 @ 11:35PM

Jeamar37,

Non-religious people tend to be bleeding heart liberals. Also, religious people don't care about "values," we care about virtues.

Patriot| 1.27.11 @ 12:17AM

Straight Shooter Nick--as usual, you nailed it.

Nick| 1.27.11 @ 4:36PM

Patriot,

Thanks!
I appreciate that very much.

shaun| 1.27.11 @ 1:16AM

I dis-agree I am not religious very spiritual strive to be christ like, but never attend organized religion, they are as divisive politics.... And I am very very libertarian not liberal at all... more fiscally conservative.. I want republicans out of my bedroom and the socialists out of my wallet..

Patriot| 1.27.11 @ 2:55AM

There is no real freedom without individual responsibility.
It's easy to be spiritual because there's no effort involved, no one holds you accountable. It takes work to be religious.

Nick is right; individual virtue is paramount if we want to remain free.

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." Benjamin Franklin

Avidyananda| 1.27.11 @ 6:04AM

Shaun,
So you are committed to some sort of disorganized religion?

Avidyananda

Nick| 1.27.11 @ 4:40PM

Shaun,

This is why I wrote that the non-religious tend to be liberals. I left room for the libertarians.

Patriot| 1.27.11 @ 10:11PM

Liberals and Libertarians who don't value individual responsibility.

Stefanie| 1.27.11 @ 2:01PM

They call them virtues? Then why does the Christian right hold the Values Voters Summit?

Nick| 1.27.11 @ 4:46PM

Stefanie,

I don't know why. I never liked that name.

Unfortunately, even people on the right can get confused with the way the left corrupts language.

IzeHavitt| 1.27.11 @ 5:46PM

I can only agree about the need for more Bible reading. However, let's get specific: it is The Book of Proverbs that most directly addresses the subject of God's wisdom. This subject has been all but ignored by the Church since probably the end of the 1st Century Church. And that's one of the primary reasons why the Church- and the rest of Western society, for that matter- is in the shape it is in. I submit that if the well meaning Christian citizen had been taught this from early on, he or she wouldn't have fallen for the errors of a Cloward and Piven, all dressed up in it's academic garb. Still amounts to wolves in sheep's clothing.

Nancy in NC| 1.26.11 @ 4:16PM

God bless Glenn Beck. He's introduced us to some wonderful folk...Piven, Van Jones, George Soros...and is denigerated and reviled by the left to the point he needs security...for simply telling the truth about those who are intent on destroying us.

Alan Brooks| 1.26.11 @ 7:31PM

"directing the armies of the poor to the next barricade from their cloistered hideaway"

Public housing and schools are bad-- but not cloistered. Do some research on it, you cloistered academic.

Alan Brooks| 1.26.11 @ 7:59PM

"Crime so dominated the national consciousness that it cost Michael Dukakis the 1988 election"

So Bush 41 couldn't have won otherwise?
You admit it!

Patriot| 1.26.11 @ 9:15PM

Sorry, Alan, but the 1988 Republican election victory was the beginning of Reagan's third term.
No way was Dukakis ever going to win, especially after the fool was spotted riding around in a tank with that goofy helmet on his basketball-sized head.

I still laugh when I think of that ridiculous pic.

MikeD| 1.27.11 @ 6:13PM

Just another example of the coddled academic being paid by our tax dollars to find ways to destroy us. These so called 'intelligencia' are an insidious force that needs to be rooted out of our colleges and universities and destroyed in every legal way possible.

This is actually a part of the whole 'Post Vietnam' syndrome where these morally bankrupt America haters were safely ensconced in our colleges while their contemporaries were fighting and dying in a foreign war. They then manipulated the system so they could hide safely in the 'ivory tower' while the rest of their contemporaries were out building their careers and making lives for themselves.

These people are the most dangerous threat to our Country, and they should be brutally removed from their positions of academic authority as soon, and as effectively, as possible.

Don't for one second fall for the "She's an old lady; leave her alone" thought process. She's every bit as dangerous and guilty as the 90 year old SS guard uncovered by the Mossad and tried in an Israeli Court for his part in the holocast. If these evil ones have their way, the destruction they are crafting will make the holocast look like a child's party.

JAWilson| 1.26.11 @ 7:39AM

"Now I know Piven really doesn't mean what she's saying here. She doesn't want to see the kind of civil disobedience riots where a 34-year-old pregnant mother was burned to death when Greek rioters set fire to a bank -- at least not in her neighborhood. "

I wouldn't have made that assumption.

Eric Cartman| 1.26.11 @ 9:42AM

Ditto, JA. What do you mean by THAT, Tucker? She said it. Is she too young to understand the meaning of words? No - she's an old bag. Is she too stupid? No - she's a blabbering liberal professor with degrees in such weighty things as Womyn Studies, Back Studies, Gay, Lesbian, Trans-Gender Though in 20th Century America Studies, and such BS as that. Maybe she is really a closet Capitalist that only poses as a Commie? No - she's a Commie.

Quit making excuses for these hideous people, Tucker. Gawd!

loulou| 1.26.11 @ 11:16AM

Hideous is right. Damned if she doesn't look like Helen Thomas but with a dirty blonde wig on.

Cpm| 1.26.11 @ 3:44PM

It's obvious he was being facetious, right down to adding "at least in her own neighborhood".

Seek| 1.26.11 @ 5:15PM

He's not making excuses. If you have read Bill Tucker's many writings over the years on welfare you would realize how wrong you are. I happened to have seen Professor Piven live, by the way -- at a "Firing Line" four-on-four deabte in Washington, D.C. on welfare reform back in 1996. Yes, William F. Buckley hosted. She was cool, calm, collected...and wrong.

Piven's degree is in social work. You make a fool of yourself and the rest of conservatives with your caricature of her "degrees." Assignment: Read more William Tucker and watch less Glenn Beck.

Patriot| 1.26.11 @ 7:09PM

Seek's Assignment: Butt out.

Leftists like you detest Glenn Beck because he's effective. Tough toenails.

Seek| 1.27.11 @ 1:32PM

It's remarkable, isn't it, "Patriot," how a conservative (like me) becomes a "Leftist" simply for offering a fellow conservative a reality check. I happen to be familiar with Piven's writings over many years. I've published articles about them. Glenn Beck, by contrast, is a clown who "discovered" an article she wrote 45 years ago.

Beck is a fool. And he's succeeding in making conservatives look like fools. That's not good in the long run.

By the way, nobody here is going to tell me to "butt out."

old white guy| 1.27.11 @ 4:36PM

be careful who you call a fool.

Patriot| 1.27.11 @ 9:58PM

You're not a Conservative, Seek, you're a Concern Troll; please spare me your phony BS.

Glenn Beck is not a fool, he's a courageous, highly effective advocate for individual rights and freedom. The only one who looks like a fool is you.

Not only have I already told you to "butt out" I'll tell you again, BUTT OUT!

loulou| 1.26.11 @ 7:57PM

What's a social work degree?

Stefanie| 1.27.11 @ 3:12PM

It sounds like you're just being derogatory, but social workers do some great work. For example, assisting families with members who have mental health issues, like autism, to get access to the resources they need.

old white guy| 1.27.11 @ 4:35PM

so more social workers are needed, that will fill the void and the total lack of wisdom that we now face with socialists trying to run the u.s. words, words and more words. not a whit of knowledge in them.

Doctor Right| 1.26.11 @ 7:49AM

Let's retire Professor Piven, and as reward for all her "hard work" we can give her a free apartment in a public housing unit...say a place like the "Murphy Homes" development in Baltimore, or the late, unlamented Cabrini Green in Chicago where she could see the fruits of her cockamamie theories up close and personal.

Eric Cartman| 1.26.11 @ 9:51AM

Another great idea! Or we can just mover her to Detroit - a nice apartment on 12th Street or 5-Mile and Woodward area.

Nunya| 1.26.11 @ 1:22PM

I know of a really good place in East New Orleans where she could espouse her wonderful musings. Even possibly the Lower 9th Ward would have a listen.

Joe R| 1.26.11 @ 2:27PM

A one room shack in Fleming-Neon, KY would be the perfect residence.

Andrew B| 1.26.11 @ 7:51AM

Ms. Piven reminds me of a certain type of liberal from my childhood. My mother, an otherwise sensible woman, had a strong, romantic attachment to a crew of trust fund radicals in New York City. One especially memorable conversation turned on whether or not it was right for people in the ghetto to shoot firemen who were struggling to fight fires in poor neighborhoods.

The general consensus was that yes, it was justifiable to do so. After all, none of these radicals lived in the ghetto, so who really cares?

Who knows, perhaps Frances Piven was at that cocktail party, nodding in agreement.

William Tucker | 1.26.11 @ 9:43AM

You can bet they didn't have any relatives who were firemen, either.

Anthony| 1.26.11 @ 10:08AM

Maybe Lenny Burnstein, another Upper West Side radical, was also in attendence, thinking of a sequel to Westside Story, entitled Burn Baby Burn.
Columbia Univ. should be declared a toxic waste dump and enclosed in cement. Somebody should contact Browner at EPA, oh wait, she hightailed it out of town before the subpoena was served.

Seek| 1.26.11 @ 6:17PM

Nice spelling of Leonard Bernstein's last name, Tony Soprano. But maybe a little hasty on the Final Solution: Columbia has produced its share of conservatives, notably, Jeffrey Hart, David Horowitz and Myron Magnet.

Anthony| 1.26.11 @ 7:05PM

Ooooh, pardon me Seek, you can give me a D for today's spelling lesson. If I do say so myself, I thought my post was pretty darn good. Guess the point about Browner and the EPA was lost on you.
Yet what a brilliant comment by you. You mean to say in over 100+ years, Columbia has produced all of three conservatives as its share? Way to make a point there big guy.
So by your count, it's the lefties from Columbia 500,000 and the conservatives 10.
Yep, you sure showed me up by God. BTW, I bet David Horowitz agrees with me. (did I spell that right?)
P.S. It's Mister Soprano to you, capiece? Learn some respect.

Seek| 1.27.11 @ 1:36PM

I cited three of the best-known conservatives produced by Columbia. They hardly are, however, the only ones. By the way, if Columbia has produced some 500,000 Lefties, as you claim, you could try naming a few of those instead of berating me. Respect? Not for you, I'm afraid.

Nick| 1.28.11 @ 8:02PM

Seek,

David Horowitz was a radical leftist at Columbia, not a conservative. He became a conservative two decades later.

So, Columbia had nothing to do with Mr. Horowitz's conversion.

uburoisc| 1.27.11 @ 10:19PM

You are right, Seek, and I would add Jacques Barzun who taught at Columbia, I regard him as the greatest historian alive. Lionel Trilling was a fine thinker and a fantastic essayist, and he was at Columbia for decades; one of the original honest liberals who turned on the idiots on the left when they went wobbly on communism. Many fine men and women from Columbia, though most came through decades ago.

Ran / Si Vis Pacem | 1.26.11 @ 8:03AM

"Now I know Piven really doesn't mean what she's saying here."

Mr. Tucker, many thanks for a fine article - though, please, do not patronize Piven. The old gal knows exactly what she wants. That much is genuine.

To the matter of threats: Taking any wagers they're all of them faux substitutes for "right-wing rage" by a fellow-traveller? The Left knows - by definition - that the civilized adults about them who refuse group-think are see no advantage in "threats." 'History' is full of such diversion. Beck spends something like a million dollars a year on security on the very real threats from angry statists; Piven needs spend nothing.

That is, until her little Revolution begins... Then the threat from jockeying fellow leftists won't be quite so fake.

Minuteman| 1.26.11 @ 10:27AM

Mr. Tucker-
What Ran meant to say is, for the trillions spent on their Marxist academic fantasies and the millions of lives lost or ruined in their implementation, with all due respect, screw Piven and her ilk with a rusty chainsaw. Sideways.

Cpm| 1.26.11 @ 3:45PM

He was being facetious.

Bob K.| 1.26.11 @ 8:29AM

Ideas Have Consequences.

Richard Weaver wrote book on this subject before Cloward and Piven even thought of their books. Too bad it never got the same attention. I wonder if Glenn Beck ever heard of it?

cuban pete| 1.26.11 @ 9:15AM

Everyone should read this book.
Thank You

Bob K.| 1.26.11 @ 1:08PM

You are welcome, Pete.

On that note, Professor John Lukacs in his recent Historical Essay, "DEMOCRACY AND POPULISM Fear And Hatred" published 2006, noted that "People do not "have" ideas; they "choose" them." pp235 and 242.
ISBN 0-300-11693-4

And we see that working out here where the writer, Mr. Tucker, changed his ideas by choosing other ones.

Nick| 1.26.11 @ 3:17PM

Bob K.,

Your comments remind me of the truism, "There is nothing new under the sun."

I'm sure Cicero had his own Cloward and Piven to deal with in his day. In fact, I think Lucius Catiline kind of fits the bill.

He was a mix of Cloward, Piven, Bill Ayers and Che Guevara. Although, Catiline was brave and lead troops in battle, but a traitor all the same. Not all historical comparisons are complete.

Stormzeye| 1.26.11 @ 5:32PM

Bob K.
You can put down Glenn Beck all you want but at least, in an entertaining and engaging way, he has introduced a lot of people to evil characters such as Van Jones, George Soros and Cloward and Piven. I am well read and well informed and except for Soros, knew nothing of the others I mentioned. I am grateful for Beck and for Fox News for giving him the forum he has. You come off as an elitist when you say that we should all know about Richard Weaver. It's enough that we know the truth!

Bob K.| 1.26.11 @ 6:31PM

Not so Stormzeye!

I wondered whether Beck had read his book. His ideas are similar. And they are similar because they are old and universal truths. And Weaver discussed them in his book as early as 1948. As Nick noted above, "There is nothing new under the sun." I believe that is from the Old Testament in the Book of Ecclesiastes.

And I did not imply that everyone should know about him. But those who haven't read this book will find it very informative and easy to read. He was an excellent writer.

With all due respect, I suggest that you read the posts here more carefully in the future before you decide whether you agree or disagree with them.

Nick| 1.26.11 @ 6:51PM

Bob K.,

You are correct, sir!

Ecclesiastes 1:10, "Nothing under the sun is new, neither is any man able to say: Behold this is new: for it has already gone before in the ages that were before us."

I apologize for not giving proper attribution. Completely slipped my mind.

Jack Olson| 1.26.11 @ 8:38AM

Isn't AFDC "Aid to Families with Dependent Children" rather than "Aid to Financially Dependent Children"? If Tucker erred in his nomenclature, that doesn't refute his argument that the poverty pimps both in government agencies and in college departments of social work worsened the problem they were supposedly trying to cure. It does detract from Tucker's credibility, though, if this is a malapropism.

john| 1.27.11 @ 6:07PM

malapropism...
an act or habit of misusing words ridiculously, esp. by the confusion of words that are similar in sound.
Learned new word. thx

Lawler Nicoteri| 1.26.11 @ 8:39AM

Lord save us from the academics. A more insufferably useless group would be difficult to find.

Stormzeye| 1.26.11 @ 5:36PM

There's nothing wrong with "academics" as such, just the so-called Social Scientists who are as far from pure science as lightning is from lightning bugs (to paraphrase Mark Twain).

Clint| 1.26.11 @ 8:47AM

There's The Real World & There's Piven's Groves of Academe Fantasyland.

"A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality."

dw| 1.26.11 @ 9:01AM

There is a difference between fantasy intelligence and objective intelligence....Piven and her elk represent the former. Now, just how many students has she infected with her nonsensical drivel. Of course, this shallow thinking is typical of the leftist mind.

Deborah D | 1.26.11 @ 9:10AM

We know that she infected our very own president. The community organizer-in-chief has a reality-resistant strain of the infection.

pat harwin| 1.26.11 @ 9:45AM

She has an elk? In New York City? Shouldn't animal control be notified?

Doctor Right| 1.26.11 @ 9:55AM

You can truly judge a person's emotional maturity and intellectual acumen by how much they buy into liberal academic gobbledygook.

...Thus, Obama...

Timothy L. Pennell| 1.26.11 @ 10:12AM

All right, everybody. Ya gotta cut me some slack, here.
Watching "The Dark Knight" the other day, one of the scenes in that movie explained this Far Left SKANK, and her ilk, to a tee.
In trying to convince Bruce Wayne that he DIDN'T understand the motives of his opponent - The Joker - Alfred told him a story about his time in BURMA during WW2. About a GUY, from the forests, who killed, indiscriminately. Who Terrorized the Villagers, and took the precious gems that they mined. And he told him how, he and his mates, one day, found these Valuable Stones just scattered about on the jungle floor.
When Bruce Wayne asked him why the guy would do this? Why he didn't keep them for himself? Alfred answered him: "He wasn't interested in Wealth, or anything else, for that matter."
And then he said this: "Some people just want to WATCH THE WORLD BURN".
Ladies and Gentlemen. I give you Francis Fox Piven.

skedaddle| 1.26.11 @ 5:25PM

Very true. My great-grandma always said "some are born of the Lord and some are born of the devil". Some people truly do just want to watch the world burn.

Dan Hirsch| 1.26.11 @ 10:15AM

Obviously, Ms. Piven's "research" would benefit greatly from a good mugging or purse snatching.

I do not wish it on her, or on anyone. It's just that so many people believe that evil is imaginary. Not until they feel its angry breath down their neck, its hard cruel hand around their throat, its rotten, selfish fingers on their purse or wallet! Then the light shines through.

Does this mean a falling crime rate is bad for conservatives? Only for conservatives who hide their ideas under bushel baskets!!!

335blues| 1.26.11 @ 10:32AM

Why isn't the violence this mentor to obama/marxist agitator advocates a crime?

Wes in MT| 1.26.11 @ 10:57AM

I've encountered old bats like this one. They know it all and are not afraid to tell you so. These marxists were mean and hateful when they were young and now that they are old, have not changed one wit. They are still enemies of the nation, advocating change by any means, including violence. I give no respect to these old fools, they deserve none, what with their haughty, I'm better than you, look how I've managed to live of the backs of others all these years. Look to the carnage in the past century, the bodies piled high to the sky (100 million or so - just a statistic).
Find some way to identify with the victims of these evil doers ( I myself am a descendent of ukrainians who managed to flee before the Stalin made famines of the 1930's that claimed an acknowledged 8 million victims) and you will come to hate them. It's not that hard when you can bring yourself to recognize the evil that they wish to force on our land. I cannot be "civil" with someone who's goal is to enslave me and my descendants, I don't care if it is only a "soft tyranny".

mames| 1.26.11 @ 11:14AM

There is nothing worse than the destruction given us by "the greatest generation" who kept a socialist in office for 4 terms and allowed SS and other socialist programs get a foothold in this country. Good fighters; intolerably, willfully ignorant. Your grand children and great grand children are just begining to dig out of your Piven inspired mess.

mames| 1.26.11 @ 11:15AM

greatest generation my ass

Ken in Tyler| 1.26.11 @ 11:20AM

The Manufacturer's Handbook speaks of an ongoing struggle which "is not against flesh and blood". The root cause of our difficulties is our abandonment of an unqualified recognition that there exists a standard of right and a wrong that is unchanging. The Founders did and clearly stated that our government was designed only "for a moral and religious people". Moral people are self-restrained in their behavior . By giving governmental credence and financial support to these godless theorists who think they can create heaven on Earth, we have been complicit in the success they have achieved.
"And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath?" Jefferson

GARY DUFFORD| 1.26.11 @ 11:22AM

My god this man is justifying the death threats aganist a 78 year old widow.

mames| 1.26.11 @ 11:54AM

huh? what are you referring to?

GARY DUMBASS| 1.26.11 @ 11:58AM

My god this woman is cheerleading the burning to death of pregnant Greek women.

Patriot| 1.27.11 @ 2:58AM

LOL!

WTF| 1.26.11 @ 12:09PM

When someone shoots Piven, the left will blame Beck...

Steve A| 1.26.11 @ 12:19PM

Piven is all for riots, just as long as they are not directed at her.

Anthony| 1.26.11 @ 5:50PM

Naw, not to worry WTF, the shooter(s) will first have to get past Piven's door man on West 57th St. Unless the tip is good, she's safe, besides, he's one mean hombre.
And if the elevator is not working, they'll have to climb 27 flights of stairs to get to Piven's penthouse. These lefty radicals know how to barricade themselves from the riff raff.

John| 1.26.11 @ 12:38PM

Death threats against an old lady- how far u freedom loving people have fallen. What next take away health care from little babies . Oh yeh, forgot you believe in that as well . The freedom loving people - death panels for all. How do u people sleep at night. Ver well probably....

Steve A| 1.26.11 @ 1:15PM

Hey John Boy, I would bet you the ranch Palin gets 50X the threats grandma Piven gets from Obama disciples so you can just toss that lame argument out the window. These people, on both sides, who utter these threats are sick. Last time I checked though, Palin was not calling for riots like your grandma Piven.

Further, I bet you are pro choice, correct? So you believe it's OK to suck a child into a tube & stick it in a blender but I'm the bad guy wanting to deny kids medical treatment as I oppose Obamacare. Do I have it straight??

Wes in MT| 1.27.11 @ 10:49AM

Hey John Boy,
Francis Piven is not "some little old lady". She is merely an aging radical who at 78 is still calling for the destruction of the country that I love and call home. William Ayers is not a reformed student protestor, he's someone who still thinks he did not commit enough violence against this country. These two have never left behind the craziness of the '60's. They still believe in violent revolution. No quarter given by these reprobates, none taken. As for death panels, that's a lefty creation, merely spotlighted by the right. It's your guy O who voted against giving babies any form of health care if they survived and abortion and that event happens more than you know. Maroon.

Brian B| 1.26.11 @ 12:43PM

I can still remember watching Milton Freidman's 'Free to Choose' on PBS many years ago and the discussion group afterward. One show featured the unspeakable Piven and the noble Tom Sowell. At one point, after some comment by Sowell about conditions in the south during his youth, the delightful and delightfully arrogant Frances decided to lecture Tom on what poor blacks actually experienced during his youth and how they felt about it.
He nearly rocketed out of his chair in astonishment and were he a violent man I'm sure she'd still bear the well earned scars.
What a malignant little ditz from prog-hell.

Timothy L. Pennell| 1.26.11 @ 1:01PM

All right, everybody. Ya gotta cut me some slack, here.
Watching "The Dark Knight" the other day, one of the scenes in that movie explained this Far Left SKANK, and her ilk, to a tee.
In trying to convince Bruce Wayne that he DIDN'T understand the motives of his opponent - The Joker - Alfred told him a story about his time in BURMA during WW2. About a GUY, from the forests, who killed, indiscriminately. Who Terrorized the Villagers, and took the precious gems that they mined. And he told him how, he and his mates, one day, found these Valuable Stones just scattered about on the jungle floor.
When Bruce Wayne asked him why the guy would do this? Why he didn't keep them for himself? Alfred answered him: "He wasn't interested in Wealth, or anything else, for that matter."
And then he said this: "Some people just want to WATCH THE WORLD BURN".
Ladies and Gentlemen. I give you Francis Fox Piven.

Don Gaines| 1.26.11 @ 1:40PM

Sure a brain transplant would do wonders but then there is Obamacare something she would or maybe did approve so at her age its just end of life discussion's. I can do that for her. Go die B***h.

Redstateboy| 1.26.11 @ 2:29PM

Due to the likes of Piven and her kind... I find myself selling Auto Insurance over the phone to the likes of Tamasha from Bayonne, NJ. with 3 kids from three different fathers, on welfare, ADC and as ignorant as a stump and just to make it smart all the more... this year I have to pay income tax - how do you suppose that makes me feel about Liber-ul academics and what they preach?

GARY DUFFORD| 1.26.11 @ 2:55PM

This misleadingly titled story comes on the heels of the stories of this womans plight. 45 years ago her ad her husband wrote a thesis paper, like thousands of paper are written every year. Someone read it decided to use it to justify their agenda. Thats was the extent of her involvement.
It seemingly failed because only bits and pieces of the theory were ever implimented or it was a bad theory. Thats not really the issue is it?
What is at issue is for 18 months now Glenn Beck has been spouting some big conspiricy claims to the American public. This old woman has been made a central figure in Beck's "vision". Supposedly this old woman part time college professor is some king pin player of behind the scenes polotics who is capable of astonishing things. He has ased his "theory" on lies or delusions.
The result has been a 78 year old inocent woman can no longer live by herself with out fear. The State Police have to keep aclose watch on her house. This is not because she wrote a paper 45 years ago. Its because Beck and other right wingers have gone far beyond sane or fair and are happy at inciting violence on anyone the can.

Nick| 1.26.11 @ 3:32PM

Mr. Dufford,

Perhaps, if you could read better than you can type and spell, you would know that Miss Piven is still promoting her evil agitprop.

I pray she repents of her evil ways. But, if she refuses, I pray that Almighty God rids society of her presence, as He did her husband. She is much too long for this earth.

Cpm| 1.26.11 @ 3:55PM

If you were paying attention to the above article or read The Nation as you libs are required to do, you would know that she has lately been suggesting that our unemployed engage in the same violent strikes and riots that have been afflicting Greece and Europe. She ain't your white haired granny.

Frisbee| 1.26.11 @ 3:27PM

Didn't Jonathan Smith write "A Modest Proposal" in the 1600's, outlining (sarcastically) how the poor should just eat their babies? It seems that with Margaret Sanger and Piven and these other moderns, it's no longer a joke.

Cpm| 1.26.11 @ 3:49PM

Jonathan Swift and it was the poor Irish.

Frisbee| 1.26.11 @ 5:17PM

Swift - right - thanks for the correction

martin j smith| 1.26.11 @ 3:45PM

This story vaguely reminds me of the episodes with Helen Thomas. I feel no sorrow for either Thomas or Piven. The are in different ways public figures-one as a so called journalist the other as an ideologue who has lots of advice about bringing this country down. Too bad for them and good for Beck. I would wager that 75% of American voters never heard of Piven and Cloward.

PurpleLips| 1.26.11 @ 4:04PM

Both Helen and Fox are hot!!!!!!!!!!!!

jawin| 1.26.11 @ 4:21PM

I've heard of Cloward-Pavin, but assumed they were long dead. Astonishing to know she is still alive. What a long fall in such a short time, America's wisdom.

Wait a minute, she was well over 30 years of age at the time. I thought her ilk was not to trust anyone over the age of 30!?!

hardcard| 1.26.11 @ 4:28PM

Mr. tucker, you sir are an ass !!!!

Nick| 1.26.11 @ 5:29PM

What a well thought out and deeply incisive argument you have made. Your mother must be sooooo proud of you.

skedaddle| 1.26.11 @ 5:30PM

Wow, what a well-reasoned argument! You must be one of those really smart leftists. (sarcasm)

Kingofthenet| 1.26.11 @ 8:32PM

I wonder which one of beck's Deranged Luniatic listerners, will 'take her out' or will they get outinto a shootout with Cops?

Angel Artiste | 1.26.11 @ 11:00PM

Only Lefterst luniatic listerners "take people out", since they are the appropriate mix of ignorance and violence.

Nick| 1.26.11 @ 11:45PM

Kook of the Net,

I wonder which one of Olby's deranged lunatic viewers will "take out" 30 Rockefeller Plaza, or will they get into a shootout with police officers?

Nite| 1.26.11 @ 9:21PM

Glen showed video of this radical giving a speech, where she was advocating riots and anarchy such as those in Greece. She should not be surprised if her comments come back to bite her in the butt.

Steve in Pittsburgh| 1.27.11 @ 12:23AM

My conservative leanings started when I was about 10 years old.
I went out to get the mail, at my grandparents house. There was a tax bill in the mail. While I was still on the street (in a rural town, not a lot of traffic), only a few feet from the mail box, walking away from it, I wondered, why do we pay taxes?

My grandmother said it was to pay for the police and so on. But that answer was not and is not good enough. Not for me, anyway.

fsilber| 1.27.11 @ 4:35AM

I was a child in the 1960s, but I was old enough to see the changes that resulted from the application of her theories.

The result of her first theory, "Delinquency and Opportunity: A Theory of Delinquent Gangs" is the reason I became an activist in the movement to demand "shall-issue" concealed handgun permit systems. I could not trust government alone to protect me from crime after I saw Americans neighborhood by neighborhood forced to "trade land for peace" -- as they were turned into "wandering Jews" moving from here to there in a never ending search for security.

The results of her second theory, ""The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty" is a key reason I stopped trusting liberals to redistribute wealth to reduce economic inequality. (It's a shame, because government _could_ have done good instead of harm with the money.)

Wes in MT| 1.27.11 @ 10:56AM

Francis Piven is just a 20 something radical in a 78 year old body. That's the problem with the left.
Nothing that happens beyond the college years ever changes their world view. At 78, she is still advocating riots and violence and the left considers this wisdom? You reap what you sow.

Tomas Thanatos| 1.27.11 @ 1:25PM

It might be best if Jack Kevorkian had helped her.

Delores Smith| 1.27.11 @ 2:00PM

I believe that Obama and George Soros are in Phase I of the Cloward-Piven strategy. There is a photo of Piven watching Bill Clinton sign the motor law. Read this and see what you think.

http://apathetic-usa.com

Marc Jeric| 1.27.11 @ 9:12PM

La Piven has been a communist revolutionary all her life, given sanctuary by an irresponsible university. By the same principle that university could give a professorship to a multiple murderer or a sexual predator - except their victims are hugely less in number than Piven's. What she does not know but this refugee from a communist hell knows well, is that after the communists once in power do is, first, to kill capitalist, and second, kill all far-left "intellectuals". The communist gang of mass murderers does not need those "intellectuals" any longer.

Patriot| 1.27.11 @ 10:01PM

She's just another useful idiot.

Emma| 1.28.11 @ 2:09AM

"Now I know Piven really doesn't mean what she's saying here. She doesn't want to see the kind of civil disobedience riots where a 34-year-old pregnant mother was burned to death when Greek rioters set fire to a bank -- at least not in her neighborhood...."

I see no basis for your assumption. You say you "know" this. I don't believe this is knowable. We need to start believing what these people say they want, and stop cleaning it up for them.

ironhorzmn| 1.28.11 @ 1:18PM

This woman is clearly calling for violence, killings and riots. This is inescapable for anyone familiar with the terror currently consuming Greece.

shipley130| 1.29.11 @ 3:12PM

The only thing communism ever does is allow thugs and killers to run a country.

LarryG| 1.29.11 @ 10:28PM

I agree with Wes in MT. How can someone in academia that long fail to learn?

Adidas | 8.11.11 @ 4:41AM

is good

العاب | 4.11.12 @ 3:30PM

Death threats against an old lady- how far u freedom loving people have fallen. What next take away health care from little babies . Oh yeh, forgot you believe in that as well . The freedom loving people - death panels for all. How do u people sleep at night. Ver well probably....

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