[PEN-L:11448] Re: Child tax credit

[djones@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (rakesh bhandari)]

>credit.  There will be no deal without at least some gains for the
>working poor.  The Administration has been pretty strong on this
>particular point so far.

Max, this is disturbingly evasive. For Clinton, the "working poor" does not
include "very poor" families--that was the whole point of my post.  You say
nothing about the horrible invention of this invidious category, a modern
euphemism for the "unfit".  Most of your post is simply irrelevant to the
concern I raised.

You then responded to what I wrote:

>> Of course the headline should have read "Bipartisan Support for Negative
>> Eugenics Prompts Less Outrage Than In Nazi Germany"
>
>I would say that whether or not low-income families with
>children get a few hundred dollars per kid in tax credit
>refunds is not quite on a par with 'Eugenics.'  Save your
>energy for when we really need it.

Of course, relative to income of a "very poor" family, $500 per child is
not an insubstantial sum. Eugenics can proceed through incentives and/or
coercion. This legislation is based on a perverse logic of human worth, and
to the extent that this legislation validates that logic, it validates the
attempt to operate on the basis of it. And, by the way, it did not take
much energy to express my outrage at the logic of human worth that is
implied in this attempt to distribute the tax credit.

Rakesh