Jan
25
2004
The “I’m more sympathetic than you” crowd has a new gold standard: no one is allowed to measure poverty in terms of wealth.It’s a lazy Sunday afternoon, so I thought I’d check out what’s tripping across the Fox News wire. I should have stayed in bed this morning.
But alas, at least I have a bed. Unlike most poor Americans, right? Think again:
According to a recent study by the Heritage Foundation, 46 percent of the technically “poor” live in their own homes, most with more living space than the average person in Paris, London or Vienna. While 73 percent own at least one car, 30 percent own two or more, and 76 percent have air conditioning. Also, according to the study, 65 percent have a washing machine, 97 percent have a color TV and 78 percent have a DVD player or VCR.Of course, a large part of this incongruity is that most “poor” people aren’t really “poor”. In the complicated dance that is class warfare politics, the Democrats have for years been defining poverty up (while defining wealth down – all the better to tax you with, my dear). Many Americans, beset by high taxes and forgetting who has put them in this bind, go along with the classification on the supposition that things have to be getting worse for “poor people” (whoever that means) because they themselves feel so squeezed right now, too. But when the Heritage Foundation tries to inject logic into the Democrats’ carefully constructed house of cards, the rhetoric rises to new levels of stupidity – not to mention vicious exploitation, mostly for effect on racial politics.
“I just think that measuring quality of life in the United States — or for that matter anywhere — by material possessions is morally bankrupt,” said Bob Erlenbusch with the Los Angeles Coalition to End Hunger. “We’ve got in L.A. County on any given night, 80,000 to 90,000 people who are homeless.”I won’t even bother to get into a debate over the accuracy of those numbers, the stupidity of what constitutes “homeless”, how those people got there, or why – with all the money we spend on the problem – how they stay that way. And I won’t discuss the fact that L.A. county is the home of some of the most affluent liberals in the country, all of whom seem to go out and sleep on a heating vent once or twice a year, like Charlie Sheen. No, I’ll leave that for some other time.
For now, let’s concentrate on the first part of the quote, the part where a guy whose job is to make white liberals feel guilty about not being poor in LA (and we all know who that would be, don’t we?) rails against the concept of measuring how many poor people there are at all. And rails against using wealth as the yardstick against which we would take that measure. And he says this right before he himself quotes numbers based on how many people don’t have a house to live in… which is a fairly substantial “material possession” isn’t it? How does all this work inside a liberal mind?
Oh, wait… there’s video footage of that already, isn’t there?
Jan
21
2004
“Honoring” Dr. King?
Filed Under Race and Prejudice | 4 Comments
“Honoring” Dr. King?
Filed Under Race and Prejudice | 4 Comments
Yet another example of the twisted racism that has perverted King’s Dream. As you read the
Jan
20
2004
One of the things that happens when a new holiday takes root is that myths about the memorialized person or event are propagated. Another thing that happens is that the holiday becomes a call-to-arms for divergent views – especially views that run counter to the original intent of the founders or the opinions of the honoree. We can see this happening today in articles referring to MLK Day.
Probably the most ironic of the divergent views put forward yesterday comes from none other than Jesse Jackson, who would have us believe not an inch of progress has been made since 1963.
In Harrisonburg, Va., the Rev. Jesse Jackson said political leaders have been “romanticizing” King and taking his remarks out of context. He said a common misconception is that sentiments from King’s “I Have a Dream” speech have been fulfilled, Jackson told a crowd of more than 1,000 at James Madison University.That Jesse Jackson wouldn’t want his meal ticket co-opted by anyone actually finding The Dream fulfilled goes without saying. But I find it hard to believe that Jackson could not foresee when he lobbied for the establishment of the holiday that people might actually say nice things about King on that day.“I was with him on his deathbed in Memphis,” said Jackson. “These past years I have become more anxious — and sometimes disturbed — at the celebration of Dr. King’s birthday and the romanticizing of his life.”
And it only took 48 hours after I wrote my last post to be told how wrong I was.
Jan
18
2004
Who dares say he’s wrong?
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Who dares say he’s wrong?
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I noticed this headline peeking out at me from the “U.S. National News” section on my MyYahoo! page: Powell Recalls King’s Efforts for Blacks. This article mentions that Colin Powell is currently the U.S. Secretary of State, and once served as the nation’s senior uniformed military officer as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And it mentions that this man is black. But what I find significant is that neither reference alludes to the fact that he was the first “person of color” to ever do so – in fact it doesn’t even hint that there’s anything unusual about the man’s high office or exemplary resum