About thirty years ago, the Johnson Administration started a scheme intended to lock in the Negro vote for the Democratic Party. "We'll have 'em eating out of our hands forever," Johnson told aides. And so they did. The "Great Society" program changed urban life for all races, but impacted heaviest on the Black community.

Where once there were families -- mothers, fathers and children -- living together peacefully in our cities, suddenly young girls could "get paid" for having children out of wedlock and "fathers" were but an unnecessary interference. Actually, girls with children could not "get paid" if a man was living with them. So, within a decade, single parent households, on welfare, became common.

I actually visited five generations of unwed welfare mothers living in one house. And, except for the children, no males were allowed -- else the welfare would be cut off.

So, what of the boys? They were lost in the "Great Society" scam. Essentially, the boys from this arrangement became throw away humans, not needed or wanted for anything more than a little coupling once in a while.

Government passed laws precluding young boys from picking up part time jobs, which kept them broke. Government schools don't care if the kids learn or not. Teachers pass them on to the next grade no matter what they don't know. Even graduating from high school is no insurance kids can read their diploma anymore.

So, it's no surprise that, after a few generations of this government interference, there were a lot of feral boys running the streets in the inner-city. Nor is it a surprise that many of them banded together, in predatory street gangs.

These boys crave structure. They receive no adult supervision, so they form their own structure. That we do not like their structure is neither here nor there. These kids might be totally ignorant, but they are not stupid. They found someplace to belong.

Part of the initiation for most of these street gangs is to stick up a store or someone on the street. The initiation for some of the street gangs is to kill someone. In fact, there are some gangs that are enforcement agents for other gangs. That is, they kill people for profit.

We find a few thousand kids involved in such structured groups in every inner-city today. Generally speaking, most are involved in the illegal drug trade. And, again, that is no surprise. These are ignorant, feral boys. There is no other opportunity open to them. They can either join a gang and traffic in drugs, or they can rob and steal. That's about it in many inner-city neighborhoods.

But, the socialists got the Black population voting for the Democrats. That's all that Johnson wanted.

Now comes NAACP honcho, Kweisi Mfume, trying to blame gun manufacturers for the actions of feral boys. "Easily available handguns are being used to turn many of our communities into war zones," said Mfume. "The fact that the illegal trafficking of firearms disproportionately affects minority communities in this country is indisputable. Urban communities have sadly become so accustomed to the prevalence of firearms in their neighborhoods that they are no longer shocked at the sound of gunfire."

Not said is the fact that things were not like that before the national socialists interfered. People walked the streets safely in every Detroit neighborhood back then. Today, everyone is susceptible to assault and robbery. That's our liberal Great Society in action. It's killing people.

The Democrats paid dearly to lock in that Black vote, too. Just about a year ago, the Heartland Institute added up the cost of all those liberal Great Society programs. It's astonishing:

"Between 1965 and 1997, welfare spending cost taxpayers $6.98 Trillion (in constant 1997 dollars). After adjusting for inflation, the cost of the War on Poverty has been more than twice the price tag for defeating Germany and Japan in World War II.

"The $6.98 Trillion cost of the War on Poverty nearly equals the entire cost of the private-sector industrial and business infrastructure of the U.S. For $6.98 Trillion one could purchase every factory and all the manufacturing equipment, with enough money left over to purchase every airline, railroad, trucking firm, the entire commercial maritime fleet, every telephone, television, and radio company, every power company, every hotel, and every retail and wholesale store in the nation"

That's some very expensive votes!

Incidentally, $6.98 Trillion would be more than enough money to give every welfare family a cash payoff of a million bucks. It would have also paid 6,980,000 skilled trade union jobs for 25 years.

We'll investigate where all the money went some other time.

DOUG FIEDOR, fiedor19@eos.net