This week, America's poor, a group largely neglected by politicians, was front and center in the national conversation. On the one hand, we had President Obama speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast, invoking "the biblical call to care for... those at the margins of our society" and paraphrasing Luke in support of tax hikes on the wealthy (Question: Why would the Good Book have something relevant to say about taxes only now, but not when the president extended tax cuts for those "to whom much is given"?). On the same day as the Prayer Breakfast, Mitt Romney was accepting the endorsement of the gold-plated Donald Trump -- only one day after saying he was "not concerned about the very poor." Could you be more politically tone-deaf? They probably bonded over their mutual love of pink slips: Mitt: I like being able to fire people! Donald: I tried to trademark "You're fired!" Mitt: Glad you couldn't -- I would have owed you a lot of royalties!
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how can you possibly say the Poor have been Forgotten??? . . USA "Dependency Nation" . .
I think his plan is called "soylent green." Problem solved.
THe tragedy is that society can prevent extreme poverty; people that find themselves in shelters do climb their way out at least to the extent that they can provide for themselves and loved ones. I work at a shelter and I asked one of the women that has been volunteering there for 10 years when she started volunteering.She paused and looked at me then said she was once one of "them" and she pointed in the direction of the line of guests that had formed to queue up for food.I was speechless and she shared that she had been helped by this church.She once was homeless with her three kids. She is still financially "poor" by many standards but she has a decent place to live she is raising her kids and she gives to her commnunity. Most of all she lives with dignity. Guess that won't make it on any party's platform.
First of all, I strongly believe that having Romney as a president would be a disaster for this country, but it's clear that Romney did NOT want to say that he doesn't care for the poor, as the second part of his sentence added that if there are problems with the safety net, he'll fix it. So he cares, AND he wants to do something about it. That's the only LOGICAL conclusion you can draw from this sentence. Of course, Romney is also the guy proposing a $160 tax increase for the poor and agrees with the Ryan budget that would basically dig even more holes in the safety net (for the poor AND the middle class), but you can't use that fact to attribute a totally different meaning to a sentence he pronounced and that, IF you interpret it wrong, would correctly refer to the sense Romney's policies are having for US, progressives. That he cares for the poor is one thing, that he believes in a trickle-down ideology is another thing. We should fight that ideology with facts and solid arguments, instead of limiting our political action as pundits to the moral blaming of politicians and cynical attacks on character.
Secondly, EVERYBODY who paid attention at the end of 2010 knows WHY Obama and the Dems accepted a compromise that also included $80 billion out of the $800 billion the GOP wanted to extend the Bush tax cuts for the rich: it's because a LOT of programs helping the poor and the middle class could ONLY pass once "we the people" give the GOP the legal power to block each and every bill in the Senate, IF those who are trying to represent the poor and the middle class are willing to compromise with the GOP. If not, we would have had an ideological victory (no extension of the tax cuts for the rich) but would have to pay a totally UNACCEPTABLE price: the end of almost a trillion of help for the poor and the middle class.
So saying that president Obama is talking "too late" about taxes and the poor, that he should have thought about this at the end of 2010, is completely ignoring the context, and first of all Congress. And if you know that WE are the only ones responsible for the equation in Congress, it becomes even more absurd to say things like that. You cannot possibly send a Congress to DC that wants to block as much of a president's agenda as possible, and then blame the president and his party for compromising in order to at least achieve PART of this agenda ... .
If we're serious for a moment, we'll have to admit that we'll NEVER know his real intentions and thoughts (nor the intentions of any other politician). Only God knows them - if there's a God. So speculating about whether he "cares" for the poor or not, and taking one sentence out of its context to try to suggest that he doesn't, imho doesn't elevate the debate, it distracts from a real, thorough debate, and reduces politics to struggles between Good Guys and Bad Guys, which can only make people more cynical and politically ignorant, whereas we need the media to EMPOWER people and to make them understand how to use their constitutional political rights in a democracy.
Because the real problem isn't whether Romney cares or not, it's whether his policies will improve things or not, AND whether ordinary citizens will sincerely believe in Reagonomics or not. It's clear that a LOT of GOP voters sincerely believe in Reagonomics. So THAT's the real problem, imo. Those who believe in Reagonomics will always tend to believe that Romney cares (as according to those people Reaganomics is the best tool available to help the poor) and will vote for him, and only if he's elected will the poor once again be confronted with even more misery than what they already had to bear.
So the point is: IF we don't believe in Reaganomics, how will we prevent four more years of Reaganomics?
The answer I'd suggest is: by using solid arguments and facts to refute Reaganomics, and certainly NOT by taking half of a sentence out of its context and giving it another meaning, meaning that corresponds to OUR opinion of Reagonomics, but that at the same time has to do with something we can't prove at all: Romney's personal intentions.
Believe me, you are one or two major illnesses away from any of those situations. I promise I won't laugh at you or be snide if it happens.
Before Lyndon Johnson declared a "war on poverty," more than one in five Americans, -- 22% -- lived below the poverty line. Most of the anti-poverty programs started under Johnson (Medicaid, Head Start, Food Stamps, etc.) were continued under Nixon, Ford and Carter and by the time Reagan took office, the poverty rate had been cut in half, to 11%.
Repealing many anti-poverty measures, Reagan succeeded in raising the rate to 15%. In his final State of the Union address, he declared that in the war on poverty, "poverty won," to laughter from his Republicans.
Under Clinton, the rate got down again to about 12%, but by the end of his second term (with his help in signing off on cancelling real welfare), the rate was going up again. When Bush was done cratering the economy and the hopes of many of the poor, the poverty rate was back to nearly Reaganesque levels.
The record shows that we can defeat poverty through government action and we can allow it to grow through government inaction. But the myth persists that no government is good for poor people.
Well, if you consider that creating more poor people is good, then Republican policies have been very good for them.