Posted on 06/27/2007 1:45:55 PM PDT by sdnet
Never will a presidential debate occur without at least a passing mention of “poverty” and the ideas that a politician has to fix it, which generally includes a significant expanse in federal government control. Poverty is awful, they say, but it also serves as the surest mechanism to keep our current crop of politicians in power.
Who needs a government if the warm sun shined down upon us each day, and we all held well-paying jobs, drove nice cars and lived in 5000 sqft estates on the top of a hill? Who needs a government when people are happy and content with their lives? Who needs a government when things go well?
The answer frightens politicians to their very core. Nobody needs government when the nation is a happy place. Politicians suddenly lose power, lose influence and lose control over our lives because people become increasingly self-reliant. They lose the argument often used to maintain large and expensive social programs like Welfare and Social Security. They lose talking points for debates and news conferences. They lose their jobs.
Happiness is the last thing on a politician's mind. Politicians need national despair. They need unemployment. They depend on poverty for their very existence. Without poverty, the people's dependence on the federal government goes away. The people become self-sufficient and are instantly instilled with the greatest feelings of all: autonomy and individuality.
Politicians need poverty, and it is in their best interest to ensure that it remains firmly in place. Poverty is the lifeblood of a politician's career. It sustains them and maintains their power and influence over the lives of not just those in poverty, but everyone else's, too. How, then, do politician's maintain poverty?
Social entitlements are the surest way to continue poverty's divine intervention. Social entitlements are to poverty as iron bars are to a convicted criminal. The only difference is the iron bars are necessary to protect society, while social entitlements are necessary to keep politicians in power.
Dependence on the government is what politicians count on. They need people to look towards Washington for their very existence because people who depend on the government are likely to support the government with their voting ballots. It is in a politician's best interest to keep poverty-stricken people in poverty while providing lip service to their delicate sensibilities about dreams of a better life. It must hurt to speak out of both sides of your mouth at the same time.
Virtually every left-leaning politician wants to raise the minimum wage to “combat” poverty. In John Edwards' case, he wants to raise the minimum wage to $7.50. He also supports “work bonds”, which requires the government to match personal contributions, with taxpayer funds, to a savings account. Edwards also wants free (taxpayer-funded) college for everyone and has proposed a plan to pour millions of additional taxpayer dollars into our arcane government-funded school system, all in the name of fighting poverty.
John McCain supports housing assistance, which provides further taxpayer funding to those who are already receiving government Welfare checks to find homes. He has also proposed an “apartment voucher” system, which demands that taxpayer's pick up some of the cost of an apartment. He also supports so-called “empowerment zones” in areas of high unemployment, which places more of the burden on the taxpayer to provide entitlements to certain classes of people.
Christopher Dodd supports universal health care, a system that ultimately costs the taxpayer billions of dollars, creates mountains of bureaucratic paperwork and lowers the quality of medicine. Dodd also supports universal pre-school, where every 4-year old becomes entitled to “high-quality” education at the taxpayer's expense. He supports taxpayer-subsidized college tuition assistance and strongly opposes any privatization of Social Security, a plan that appropriately puts more retirement responsibility on the shoulders of the retiree. He wants consolidated control in the federal government.
President Bush supports the creation of the “American Dream Down payment Fund”, requiring the taxpayer to fund a portion of a person's down payment on a home. He also revealed a plan that gives $1.7 billion dollars of taxpayer's money to construction companies that work in poor or moderate-income housing areas. During his original campaign activities for president, he voiced support for a federal government program that provides taxpayer money to certain classes of people to assist with oil costs during the winter months.
These politicians are poverty pimps! They are using the deficiency of America towards their own political gain while preaching to the American people about hopes of a better life. They are taking our innermost hopes and dreams and requiring people to depend on the government to obtain them. They are greedily and callously using the plight of the impoverished to advance their own political careers.
When the indigent await anxiously for their government checks to arrive instead of hunting through the local newspaper's employment ads, it contributes to government dependency. When the indebted base their habits of reproduction on potential child credits, government dependency is ensured. When the most desolate among us focus on what the government owes them, rather than on their own talents and abilities, it destroys the incentive to pick themselves up out of poverty and into productive society.
Politicians count on it. Politicians need it. Poverty is a politician's best friend.
“Politicians count on it. Politicians need it. Poverty is a politician’s best friend.”
I guess that’s why politicians work so hard to ensure that we’ll always have lots of it.
Great article
Poverty is their best friend, but NOT for them and theirs. We got the best govt. MONEY can BRIBE!
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