Star Parker visits Mobile

Star Parker, author of Uncle Sam's Plantation:How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can Do About It, spoke in Mobile on Tuesday. If you've never heard of Ms. Parker, here's a brief introduction:

Star Parker is a Republican Party activist from Los Angeles who has made it her business to tell America's blacks to quit whining about racism, get off their butts and find work. She gets away with this because she is herself black, a single mother and a former user of some impressively heavy drugs. And she once held up a liquor store...

...As a high school drop-out in East Coast America, she joined what she calls the lazy poor. "I would steal money from neighbours. I lusted after the finest designer labels, but I was idle. I blamed racism and my parents."

Then she discovered welfare: food stamps and free health care - including trips to VD and abortion clinics. But what I really want to know about is the armed robbery in the liquor store. "It happened," she says, not sounding terribly contrite. Where? She arches an eyebrow. "It was in New Jersey. But don't expect me to tell you the name of the town. I was with a boyfriend and we never got caught. I was only 16, but the statute of limitations doesn't run out on that stuff."

Eventually, she joined a church that persuaded her to come off welfare. She took a job answering the telephone. She started a business, went bankrupt and reinvented herself as a talk-show host.

Parker went on to found the Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education (CURE), a conservative anti-poverty organization and a key player in developing the 1996 Welfare Reform Act.