Has the War on Poverty become the War on the Poor?

[Toucano]

Never in my life have I witnessed such open hostility directed at the weakest and most vulnerable in our society.

Blocking the unemployment benefits extension on the grounds of fiduciary responsibility one day and turning around and advocating tax cuts for those earning over $200,000 a year the next day is NOT a simple difference of economic philosophy or run of the mill politicking.

It's Marie Antoinette and Leona Helmsley level hostility directed at people who don't have very much. It's vulgar.


I've seen sick people literally turned out into the streets to die.

I've seen families living in tents or sleeping in cars while bank-owned properties sit vacant or get ransacked for their copper wiring.

Cities are closing public libraries, firing teachers, and slashing budgets. How long before we start to ration street lighting?

I feel like we're living in a George Romero movie, but instead of being chased by zombies, it's fat, balding white men and Stepford Fox News Actresses in pursuit.

[RandomThoughts]

1. That actually is not far off.

If you take a zombie movie, make all the zombies alive and decent people living life day by day, just trying to get by.

Then make the 'living' in the movie paranoid, thinking everyone else is a dead monster and that group trying to hide to avoid people seeing that they are shooting people in the minds, and running through shopping malls while thinking everything should be free for just them...

Well you have a backwards zombie movie.

And that is much of it.

Zombie movies are about class society from a small class that think themselves better. Could be about many classes, but thinking everyone else is monsters is part of it.


The best part about that, is if one of the zombies, talks to one of the living, many times the living understand and become like the zombies, they turn, and what do the self proclaimed living do. Shoot them to.

It really is a well known metaphor.

[midnight]

2. With all the preaching about religion and the spill over into our

govt. via ,worship breakfast, it sure is sickening that a greater light has not been shone on this moral blight.

[Toucano]

5. Right

It's Supply Side Jesus to the nth degree.

[Art_from_Ark]

3. Reagan was certainly an ass when it came to poor people

He even went so far as to make up stories about "Cadillac welfare mothers". A lot of this "anti-poor sentiment" can be traced to that empty suit.

[Toucano]

6. Does his dark shadow know no bounds?

Of course you're right.

The groundwork for all of this was laid the day Reagan was sworn in.

[Tsiyu]

4. They ARE like Zombies!

Except instead of BRAINS!!!! they have an insatiable desire to become DeSoto, slashing and pillaging and beheading their way to the gold.

Maybe they eat money, I don't know.

What I DO know is this is what our nation is.

In the past, our corporations and their CEOs treated the world's poor this way (and WE still do when we purchase slave-made items or items manufactured or grown or procured in unethical ways.)

We turned our heads away from what we did to the world's poor.


Now we see how it feels to have our coasts smothered in oil and almost no regulation of industry.

And to be paid crap wages.

People say, "Well, at least we aren't Somalia."

At least we're not Jupiter, either.

Do I have to wait til I live like a Somalian - in America - to complain?

Is that how low America has sunk?

Our wealthy should be ashamed, in 2010, to think they can save themselves if we all go down....

[cutlassmama]

7. they aren't ashamed because they have no empathy or conscious

[Tsiyu]

I know, definition of a sociopath, isn't it?

no empathy, no conscience.

I've gone past wondering how these types are still around in 2010. You'd think humans would have become smart enough to elect leaders who have more humane qualities by now.

but no.

[HEyHEY]

8. No, they are two different fronts

There are legit people out there fighting the war on poverty, there is an equal amount fighting poor people.

[Toucano]

10. Good answer. n/t

[Hydra]

18. The poor(includes me) usually have to fight for ourselves

And we're badly outgunned by the people who think they're part of the upper class.

I think it's all fear though fighting us. The people who fight us don't want to believe our system eats people alive to make a profit.

[Rex]

9. Yes and Alan Simpson is leading the charge.

He hates the working poor and homeless and would like to crush all those that get 'entitlements' except HIM, of course.

[Taitertots]

11. You can either falsely believe that the poor are inferior or cry yourself to sleep over the inequali...

Millions of people wish they had the opportunity to work hard for modest wages. Blocking unemployment will hopefully be the "let them eat cake" moment that makes it apparent that something has to give and it will be the lifestyle of the ultra rich paid for with the blood of the poor.

I had a professor from Russia complain the Detroit looked like the aftermath of a war. It isn't just a war against the poor it is a war against everyone who isn't among the cabal of the super rich. They have destroyed a thriving metropolis, your city is next.

[Donnachaidh]

12. It's NOT *just fat white men* -- it's ALL the elites, and on both sides

It's CLASS WARFARE.

Let's not further the meme that it's *them*, meaning white republicans -only-. There are plenty of people from ALL the various parties that would rather line their pockets than help the poor in this country. And it's NOT just Fox pushing this agenda. The ceo of GE is one of the elites that is pissing and moaning over that laughable *reform* being touted in Congress. And his company owns MSNBC.

If it's an *us against them* scenario it's the wealthy in this country that has it's boot on the throat of the middle class. And they've only just begun to put their full weight down. If they get away with gutting SS and Medicare, then we can kiss it goodbye. Because then people will be dying in gutters around this country. Literally.

[glitch]

13. As Michael Parenti said, these people see Indonesia and say why not here?

Although right now they seem more interested in eating Haiti. http://www.democracynow.org/

[arbusto_baboso]

14. "Become"? That happened back in 1981 and has been ramping-up ever since.

[McCamy Taylor]

15. When Diebold took away the "one citizen one vote" rule, the poor lost what little clout they had.

Now, you have to be able to bankroll a $1 billion election to get anyone to listen to you.

[Lorien]

16. We hear about the "spoiled" unemployed, the "idle" homeless and the "lazy"

poor, but never does anyone mention that the uber wealthy are among the most spoiled, idle, lazy, vicious, greedy, and destructive members of our society. They aren't "creating jobs" ;they ship jobs overseas (if they have any to give out). Most create nothing but more wealth for themselves, at best-often using carefully crafted programs on powerful computers that buy, sell, trade and bet in ways that you or I never could without such technology. Other members of the elite run huge corporations into the ground by demanding more and more from overworked employees while giving themselves tens of millions in unearned bonuses that drain the company dry-then they come to us, the taxpayers, with their hands out! THEY are the parasites. WE are the workers who drive the Nation. And it's about time that we reminded everyone of this fact.

[meow2u3]

17. Did Marie Antoinette say, "Let them eat cake"?

Does a bloodhound have an awesome sense of smell?

[ibegurpard]

19. last line of your post is brilliant.

:clap: