Welcome to the
premiere issue of  the Welfare Reform Network's media watch.  For too many years, public figures have used their "bully pulpits" to demonize welfare recipients.  In response, we felt the need to create our own Bully Pulpit as a forum to challenge misinformation in the media about poor people and welfare programs.  Crafted images, used to play on cultural prejudices, have paved the way for public support of an agenda where the behaviors of the poor are seen as the cause of poverty, thereby excusing government of the responsibility to help alleviate it.

In Bully Pulpit we present a fuller picture of poverty and its systemic causes. We hope its content invokes a call to action.

We welcome your input and feedback.

WHO IS HEATHER MAC DONALD AND WHY IS MAYOR GIULIANI LISTENING TO HER?

Over the past several years we have watched one politician after another, Republican and Democrat alike, ride the political wave of welfare bashing.  It is an easy wave to ride, since welfare recipients are one of the most unpopular groups around.  In New York City, Mayor Giuliani, in a display of bravado, has gone full force against welfare recipients.  They are an easy target, as misinformation about the poor is easy to generate and often goes unchallenged.  The City also administers welfare programs and therefore determines what kind and how many hoops people have to jump through before they prove themselves worthy of assistance.  The City has done this very effectively by putting up an unprecedented number of barriers to make it harder to get and maintain assistance. Although welfare caseload reduction makes good headlines, it has happened at the expense of severely reducing the ability of many of the poorest New Yorkers to afford the most basic necessities: housing, food, and medical care.

By now you may be asking what Heather Mac Donald has to do with the Mayor's welfare policies.  Mac Donald is one of several of the Mayor's "advisors" that have emerged from various conservative institutions.  Mac Donald is an Olin Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a right-wing think tank that has been an influential force behind many of the Mayor's harshest initiatives.  She has written extensively for the Manhattan Institute's magazine, City Journal, and her work also appears, with increasing frequency, in various other media outlets.  Moreover, the Mayor appointed her to the City University of New York (CUNY) Taskforce which was responsible for the attack on remedial education.  Yet it  is unclear  how she's been catapulted to the fore of public debate.


What  is clear is Mac Donald's ability to write inflammatory, racially-coded articles.  Her pieces reek of the misdirected moral indignation that often characterizes the policies of the Giuliani administration. In this issue of the Bully Pulpit, we examine some of Mac Donald's writings to begin to expose the wizard behind the curtain.