SIGN of the times, from a recent speech in Washington:
"We believe that government can help poor people best by helping people help themselves. The bottom line of government efforts to help people should be a transition to a better life. Government assistance shouldn't be an ending point, but a starting point, the beginning of a dynamic forward movement tTC that leads to self-sufficiency. . . .
"Government efforts to help people should free them to make choices about their lives. Housing assistance should not tie people to buildings, it should free them to choose housing the way most Americans make that choice, on the basis of schools and services and recreation and proximity to work, and medical care and personal safety. Government efforts to help people should free them from the lethal grip of economic and social isolation. . . .
"Helping people help themselves, the primacy of community, guaranteeing and promoting real choice and protection of rights, we believe strongly in these things. But it's not enough merely to believe in principles. We must bridge the gap between belief and action, and that requires beliefs to be translated into operative values, quintessential American themes the nation, fair play, justice for all, opportunity, hopefulness, children and families, decency and respect for norms and civil behavior, reductions of violence and crime, less overt segmentation of Americans by class and political groupings, entrepreneurial government, smaller-scale responses, reliance on local solutions. . . ."
The speaker? No, not Republican Newt Gingrich. Democrat Henry Cisneros, secretary of housing and urban development.