BLOOMBERG’S PROMISE OF A NEW ‘WAR ON POVERTY’ ECHOES PAST GOVERNMENT FAILURES. “There has to be a war on poverty,” says Michael Bloomberg. Does he know how the last one turned out?

“In the sixties we waged a war on poverty, and poverty won,” President Reagan liked to say, twenty years after the birth of the Great Society. The latter is topic of economic historian Amity Shlaes’ new book; perhaps Mayor Mike ought to pick up a copy.