The Poor Get Poorer?
Charlie Wrangle (Yes I know I've miss-spelled his name, but it seems appropriate, don't you think?) is losing it! The question is, did he ever have it in the first place? In a recent appearance on The O'Reilly Factor, he was unsuccessfully attempting to justify comparing Pres. Bush to Bull Connor, and perpetuate the myth that the poor are getting poorer under the Bush administration. He was verbally flailing so much near the end of the interview, that he more than once mis-pronounced Connors's name so badly, I began to think he was talking about someone else!
O'Reilly was pressing him with facts in an attempt to find out why Rangel and his ilk insist on mis-representing the state of the economy. When O'Reilly presented the senior statesman with the facts, (GDP up, incomes up, home ownership in general, and minority and black home ownership up, entitlement spending up, federal revenues up, and so on...) Rangel's fall-back position, as well as the best and only defense he could muster was "poverty is up"!
If the poor are really getting poorer, they need look no further for blame than the party that they seem to blindly support for the answers to why! For instance, lots of poor smoke cigarettes, and they can thank the Clinton Justice Department for taking a larger chunk of their incomes in order to pay for the substantially increased price of that product! Between the increased cost to the manufacturer (they have to cover the costs of litigation and settlement somehow) and the taxes levied, it's a wonder poor folk can afford to continue smoking at all!
Additionally, your buddies in congress are resisting the one thing sure to lower the cost of gasoline to the consumer, the building of new refineries! The soaring cost of gasoline has less (little) to do with the price per barrel of crude, and more to do with the @ 17 different formulations required nationally (via liberal environmental legislation), and the limited capacity to produce so many formulations with the relatively few and aging refineries we have now! Yet your Liberal buddies in congress steadfastly refuse to consider reducing the numbers of formulations, and/or allowing the building of new refineries! (there hasn't been a single refinery built in the USA in 30 years!) This is significant because of the ripple effect that soaring petro-fuel costs will have thoughout the economy!
There are many more examples out there of liberal legislation, or lack thereof, that directly and indirectly negatively impact the poor, all the way back to the so-called "Great Society Programs".
So are the poor really getting poorer? I don't honestly know but if they are, they may well have their "friends" to thank for it!
I've heard it said that the Democrats are for poor people! I can believe that 'cause they sure know how to keep and expand their base!