Frances Fox Piven Is Not Afraid of You and She Will Kick Your Ass:
The Rude Pundit is going to describe, in short, the infamous Cloward-Piven Strategy, a 1966 plot concocted in the minds of two Uhmerka-hating enemies, Profs. Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, according to Glenn Beck and the nutzoid right. Are you ready? Can you take it? Because you're about to discover the network, motherfuckers. You are about to look into the filthy roots of the tree of radicalism, you ignorant bastards, and get your brains dirty. For, indeed, it is something so insidious, so contemptuous of everything that Uhmerka stands for that it would force Uhmerka to its knees and beg for the socialist raping to stop. Holy shit, here it comes:

People who are eligible for welfare benefits should sign up for them.

Oh, fuck, now doesn't that put out a torch and make a motherfucker's raised pitchfork droop. "C'mon, man," you must be thinking. "It's gotta be more than that." To which the Rude Pundit can only say: "Ummmmm...nope That's about it." That this was written during what was called "the War on Poverty" by, you know, the Congress and President, might give it a little added finesse, but, yeah, there it is.

To elaborate a bit, Cloward and Piven pointed out that the welfare system functions kind of like the rebate system at Best Buy: the whole thing doesn't work unless most people just don't bother with it. "[P]ublic welfare systems try to keep their budgets down and their rolls low by failing to inform people of the rights available to them," the two sociologist wrote in their Republic-wrecking article, "by intimidating and shaming them to the degree that they are reluctant either to apply or to press claims, and by arbitrarily denying benefits to those who are eligible." They proposed (and got going) a series of welfare drives as a way of getting relief to the poor and, as a result of expanded welfare rolls, of making government at every level have to respond to the needs of the poor. That's it. Really. They even said so: "for this strategy to succeed, one need not ask more of most of the poor than that they claim lawful benefits."

Glenn Beck said that the goal "was to overwhelm the system and bring about the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with impossible demands and bring on economic collapse." He failed to mention that the method was merely to say that the law be followed. Indeed, it's something that virtually every no-brain idiot cockmonger attacking Piven refuses to acknowledge, even going so far as to call it "sabotage." That's like saying that actually eating all the pancakes you can eat at IHOP sabotages the restaurant's gluttonous offer. Indeed, when Piven and Cloward said in other works that mass action, even riots, may be necessary, they meant that as a response to laws not being followed and to the needs of a large segment of the population being ignored. For if a nation fails to live up to its own laws, that nation is betraying its citizens. Fuck, ain't that pretty much the only reason the Tea Party exists? Well, that and hating black people.

For her entire career, which has lasted for longer than almost all of you have been alive, Piven has been a staunch, passionate advocate for the rights of the poor, for those on welfare, and, especially, for women living in poverty. She's a fucking fighter, not a milquetoast liberal, and she believes that ensuring equality and rights for all sometimes requires more than listening to a bloated dry drunk frantically etching chalk trees like a mad caveman who doesn't understand why there's seasons. Or tides. Sometimes, it requires people to get off their asses and demand shit. Like, you know, fuck, the Tea Partiers say. Well, for them, that and hating black people.

And now, because of Beck and his focus on Cloward and Piven (who are connected to Obama, Soros, Marx, and Santa, that wealth-spreading fucker), the City University of New York professor is receiving death threats from Beck's lummox minions who wouldn't know truth if it kicked them in their empty heads. Most of the time, such threats are merely the anonymous bleats of internet losers who can't get their dicks out of their hands long enough to shut off the war victim porn and make the effort. But, these days, who knows, who knows.

People who believe the poor deserve a voice in America have long been condemned in this nation as socialist, Communists, and whatever other misunderstood word the grunting pig rightists can pull out of their historical shitbag. They have to be shut up and shut down, or the poor might actually vote in proportionate numbers. Piven's being attacked elsewhere; for instance, Andrew Breitbart's hottest whore (although James O'Keefe has a more supple ass), Dana Loesch, strives mightily to demonstrate how Piven wants violence in the streets. God, how desperate conservatives are for a clearly liberal radical to shoot shit up so they can go into blame mode.

Piven's seen it all before. From Birchers, from the Reagan right, for decade after decade, she knows that those who say that the poor are equals in a democracy and deserve to be treated as such will be attacked viciously. Read Piven. She's one of the more compelling academic authors, more practice than theory. And, by the way, for conservatives who actually fear the Cloward-Piven Strategy, well, just make sure you never apply for unemployment, Medicaid, or food stamps; decline your Social Security and Medicare. Then you'll be sure that it never comes to be.

(Note: Today Beck mocked the death threats. Classy guy, that one. He's got a self-help book out now, ya know.)