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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review August 4, 2008 / 3 Menachem-Av 5768

No credit where credit is due

By Linda Chavez


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Here's a question: Which U.S. president has done the most in history to help Africa? President Clinton, you say? Remember his much ballyhooed six-country tour in 1998, a trip in which President Clinton came close to apologizing for America's role in slavery? Of course, the most memorable picture to emerge from that visit was a glimpse of the president in his Dakar hotel room banging on a conga drum, a fat cigar in his mouth, apparently celebrating the news that a judge had dismissed Paula Jones' lawsuit accusing him of sexual harassment.


No, President Clinton may have been the first black president, as novelist Toni Morrison dubbed him, but aid to the continent during his tenure didn't come close to the mark hit by Africa's true champion — President George W. Bush. When President Bush took office in 2001, U.S. aid to Africa was less than $1.5 billion a year. By 2006, the Bush administration was spending more than $4 billion a year, and that aid will more than double under President Bush's initiatives by 2010.


Most of the money has been directed at fighting diseases: HIV/AIDS, which has devastated a continent where one third of the population of some countries is affected; tuberculosis, which remains a killer in Africa; and malaria, with more than 25 million Africans receiving prevention and treatment for this life-threatening disease. And the president has also increased trade with Africa, which has doubled during his tenure. Yet you don't hear much about President Bush's African legacy.


President Bush came into office promising he would govern with his own style of compassionate conservatism. And he's largely lived up to that promise, but he gets little or no credit. Aid to Africa is only one aspect of that compassion. This week, an annual report to Congress on homelessness in the United States reports a historic drop in the number of chronically homeless people over a two-year period: a 30 percent decline between 2005 and 2007.


The study, which is mandated by Congress, was conducted by researchers from Abt Associates and the University of Pennsylvania Center for Mental Health Services and Research. It showed that a new policy enacted to promote "housing first" for chronically homeless people — most of whom are either mentally ill or substance abusers — actually works. Instead of allowing these individuals to shuttle between the streets, shelters, and hospitals in a vicious cycle, the new policy called for intervention to get them into permanent housing. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has financed 10,000-12,000 additional permanent housing units every year for the past four years — which may explain the more than 50,000 fewer chronically homeless persons detailed in the report.


But don't expect President Bush to get any credit for shifting priorities in this arena either. Bush isn't likely to get an award from the National Coalition for the Homeless or other liberal advocacy groups. And Bush's lack of recognition isn't confined to liberals. Many fiscal conservatives grouse that Bush's emphasis on beefing up foreign aid and financing expensive new social programs makes him one of the biggest spenders in history. Indeed, federal aid to education increased 58 percent in the first three years of the Bush administration — more than in all eight years of the Clinton administration, according to the nonpartisan Annenberg Political Fact Check. But the teachers unions still detest Bush for pushing tougher standards for students and teachers.


Bush's true legacy won't be known until he's been out of office for a number of years. So much depends on progress in Iraq that all else may be obscured. Just as Watergate defined President Nixon's legacy and the Vietnam War largely determined the way President Johnson was regarded by history, Iraq will be the defining issue that establishes President Bush's place in history. But no matter what happens in Iraq (and signs are certainly encouraging since the surge in U.S. troops has helped secure stability there), President Bush has left a positive mark in other areas as well. In time, he'll get the credit he deserves.

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JWR contributor Linda Chavez is President of the Center for Equal Opportunity. Her latest book is "Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics". (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.)

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