One of the most amazing things about Donald Trump as a presidential candidate is his ability to say something interesting or at least hint at something interesting when he appears to be saying absolutely nothing.
The latest example of this came
last week, when Trump told African-Americans they really have nothing to lose by voting for him.
Now obviously what Trump said was in large part just a rehash of stereotypes that clueless white people have about black people -- they're all poor, they live desperate lives, etcetera etcetera.
And obviously, black people do have a lot to lose by voting Republican.
But still, even in the midst of all that garbled logic and racial stereotyping, Trump was getting at something important: the seemingly permanent problem of poverty in the United States of America, especially in communities of color.
Which of course, raises the question why DO so many of our poor communities remain poor whether they're black in West Baltimore or white in Appalachia?
Why are we STILL seeing poor people stay poor, generation after generation?
The answer is actually simpler than you might think: it's all about the money, stupid.
It's all about the money and who controls it.
For decades, centuries even, conservatives have been pushing this idea of state's rights and local control.
Big government far away in Washington just messes things up, they say, so it makes more sense to let the people who actually live in communities make decisions about things that actually affect those communities.
But here's the thing: when conservatives say "local control," they really mean "local funding," and that's the problem.
You see, there are three primary things that make a community successful and give its citizens the opportunity to improve their lives.
The first is good schools, the second is safety (good police), and the third is the ability to make effective political and policy changes when changes need to happen (access to voting).
If you live in a rich community, you never even have to think about these things.
They're there at your beck and call, and they always work fine. The schools are great, the police are friendly, and voting takes 15 minutes or even less.
But things are different when you're poor.
