In the 1970s, Star Parker was a delinquent teenager, mixed up with crime and drugs. Life on county aid was far from impoverished - she was able to lounge in her own Jacuzzi, party at Venice Beach, bring in extra income with under-the-table jobs, and take the system for all it was worth. It was the power of her Christianity that turned her life around. But it was Star's no-excuses attitude of self-empowerment that firmly positioned her on the fast track of conservative politics, speaking out against welfare as the No. 1 cause of urban America's moral and economic decline.
2004
