Tomas De Torqamada of the Spanish Inquisition would have had a tough time torturing logic more than Douglas J. Besharov (same thing)of the American Enterprise Institute (same thing), achieves in his essay
"Poor America. It is as if Jonathan Swift had written "A Modest Proposal" in all sincerity with not a hint of a tongue in his cheek. Perhaps more frightening in this homage to conservative callousness is the fact that he uses a Census report that seems to echo his sentiment with flabbergasting inhumanity.
"Cheap" is such a cheap adjuctive but conservatives truly do not merit a pricier one. Their every belief is merely a rationalization of being cheap. To help a bum in the gutter is to "enable" his addictions, but to allow farmers to pay this bum less than minimum wage is to "empower" him. Cheap is cheap and Besharov uses (distorts) a census report to sauve any grief that could keep good conservatives awake at night (HA,HA,HA,HA...GAWD, LIKE THAT WOULD HAPPEN!!)
...a new data series by the Census Bureau, "The Effects of Government Taxes and Transfers on Income and Poverty: 2004," so significant. Developed after nine months of meetings between outside experts and senior government officials from the Census Bureau and other federal agencies, it allows us to get a better view of the resources available to low-income Americans...box
Aahhh, those pesky resources. Can you imagine the nerve of those bottom quartile freeloaders hogging nearly one whole percent of the GNP! Hell, poor people didn't have the nerve to listen to FM radio or watch color TV back in the Sixties!!! But all they do now is bitch, bitch, bitch.
Let's really expose these "resource" suckers:
...First, the series gets a better fix on "market income" poverty--poverty before taxes and means-tested transfers like cash welfare. (Although the Census Bureau counts it separately, Social Security, like pensions, is included as market income since it is "earned" during one's working years.) Now we can use the correct inflation adjustment, count the income of cohabitors and coresidents, and include the implicit income of home ownership. (The last mostly affects the elderly.) Finally, adding in government estimates of unreported income results in a market income poverty rate of about 7.9%, not the official rate of 12.7%. Second, as suggested by the name of the new data series, government transfer programs also reduce financial need. Taking into account welfare payments, food stamps and housing assistance (noncash benefits are presently not counted) results in a poverty rate of about 5.1%--and even this excludes the value of Medicaid for the poor, roughly $2,000 per person...
So you mean to tell me...or actually Besharov is telling me bluntly...with a straight face and not a hint of a tongue in his, no-doubt puffy, reptilian face...that we have to consider people "poor" even if food stamps and welfare take their theoretical "income" over $20,000. Can't they heat there homes with the notion that they aren't "theoretically" poor.
Seriously for a second: as a stay at home dad struggling everyday to manage a modest middleclass home for my family of four on six times the poverty rate ceiling this shows the amazing disconnect conservatives live with. My mortgage is close to $20,000 a year, and that is very average. If I had to make do with $60,000 a year I would probably have to sell a kidney or worse, go back to working in an office, 9-5. Perhaps that's what Mr. Besharov should do: get a real job for which he is qualified. Judging from his literary work I would peg that job as somewhere between sewage remediation and circus geek. That might net him close to the poverty line...close, but then he could qualify for all those delicious "resources available to low-income Americans"
Oh, and a tip of the stovetop hat to that lovable Log Cabin Hypocrite Andrew Sullivan who publicized this feces without the slightest remorse.