War on Anti-Poverty Programs One of the most violent attacks undertaken by conservative U.S. think tanks has been on the federal anti-poverty programs. Beginning in the 1980s the Manhattan Institute sponsored and promoted two publications that urged the elimination of the federal anti-poverty program. "Wealth and Poverty", concluded that poverty was the result of personal irresponsibility, while "Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950 - 1980", observed that anti-poverty programs reduced marriage incentives, discouraged workers form accepting low-wage jobs, and encouraged unintended births among low income teenage and adult women. These books were followed by Lawrence Mead's "Beyond Entitlement: The Social Obligations of Citizenship", which blamed governments for perpetuating poverty by not requiring welfare recipients to work. Other conservative grantees have used their funds for more than a decade to spread this kind of conservative political rhetoric and policy opinion through major media and conservative-controlled print and broadcast outlets. The redefinition of the problem and the demonization of the poor finally culminated in the passage of the welfare reform in 1996. The conservative anti-poor crusade not only led to cuts in federal anti-poverty spending, but also eliminated the only federal program guaranteeing cash assistance to poor women and their children.

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Who are you? Who are you? Direct marketing companies have many othe ways of appropriating data bodies. Allowing form regional and national variations, data are obtained from registration cards, telephone directories, social insurance data bass, religious groups, educational institutions, trade unions, registry offices, banks and of course from the date trace left behind in digital environments, e.g. by clicking on an advertising banner. Direct marketing companies collect als this data systemtically and enhance them, i.e. they associate a range of different indicators with a person's name. Techniques used range from simple inferences ("if you are German and your name is Claudia, you are 80 % likely to be between 25 and 33 years old") to complicated data mining programmes such as Knowledge Seeker, Enterprise Miner, or Scenario. Indicators include postal address sex size of household age group purchasing power neighbourhood quality size of town region professional and academic titles phone and fax numbers e-mail address pronness for mail-order purchasing number of children age of children marital status purchasing patterns investment behaviour credit status credit history convictions nature of products and services purchased many other social and economic indicators There can be a hundred or more indicators associated to an individual's name. Direct marketing companies such as Abacus direct and Schober maintain databases that include almost everybody with a social existence. In fact, dirct marketing in increasingly becoming the modern individual's constant companion, starting from birth: in many places, new-born babies receive gift boxes with baby food, toys and other baby products - in return for their personal data.

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