Why.... It's as if Charlton Heston was quoting the figures on how many people are needlessly killed by guns every year just because the guns are there. Romney, as part of his "Convention Reinvention" plan, is saying now with great (false) gusto: "One in six Americans is now in poverty!" As if this just happened. Oooh, it's Obama's fault! He implies that the economy is so bad that suddenly one out of six is poor. Dead wrong.
Though poverty did increase following the 2008 Republican Near Depression, economic collapse and great loss of jobs, it always does following a recession as figures below show. Before that, POVERTY INCREASED 2003 - 2008 under George W. BUSH!
POVERTY INCREASED .7% from 2007 to 2008, that's (Mr. Romney, pay attention) before Obama was in office. Earlier, went up .2%, from 2003 to 2004. That's .9% under Bush, when we were not in the worst Recession since the Great Depression! Was that Mr. Obama's fault too? 2008 census... Poverty
Romney and Ryan care nothing about the poor, about suffering people, about the middle class. How can we say this with certainty? Because we know they want to completely shred the safety net which they view as a hammock that allows poor lazy people to get a free ride. Goodbye Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security and huge cuts even to FOOD STAMPS. That is what they have in their well-documented plans. Well documented. (See Krugman quote below). Today we read FL Republican legislators refused $4.9m in federal funds for children laird, Florida Blocks Healthy Start.
Lord have mercy before I give those guys a swift kick where it would do the most good. LEAVE THE POOR OUT OF IT, MITT! Just like you always have. Follow me here......
Hearing Romney voice this in several recent speeches makes me so angry.
It's as if Mr. Sandusky suddenly started quoting how many children in America are abused by people their families trust!
We know that CEO's of Romney's 1% ilk earn 380 times regular employees, that's an average of 12.9m/yr compared to 34K/yr. A Nation of Ineqality As Paddy Ryan said, "As inequality increases, so does poverty.
Mitt doesn't care or think about such things. He's been in his 1% bubble most all of his adult life like the other 1% plutocrats.
It's as if Karl Rove began saying President Obama was a wonderful president who deserves to be re-elected.
* Since 2007, the poverty rate has increased by 2.6 percentage points.
* Median household income declined the first full year following the December 2007 to June 2009 recession, as well as in the first full year following three other recessions (March 2001 to November 2001, January 1980 to July 1980 and December 1969 to November 1970).
* The poverty rate and the number of people in poverty increased in the first calendar year following the end of the last three recessions. (THUS:)
U.S. 2009 2010
43,569 14.35% 46,180 15.1%
census.gov
The reason it went up after this Great Recession is that it was so much worse than a "normal" recession. Bush threw so many millions out of work!
So Romney's talk about the number of people in poverty is like, well......
It's as if Richard Nixon was crying about how many people are being secretly wiretapped!
Hey, this is fun!
It's as if Peggy Noonan suddenly had a thought that was substantive rather than, in her own mind, stylistically elegant.
It's as if Joe Lieberman found he had a brain and a conscience therein.
Ok, I'll stop. But. We should view Romney's recent "Poverty Statements" as no less farcical as the above "as if's."
What's your "as if"?
As Paul Krugman in Galt, Gold and God said this week (and may I say, what a great title!):
As I documented in my last column, Mr. Ryan’s reputation for being serious about the budget deficit is completely undeserved; his policies would actually increase the deficit. But he is deadly serious about cutting taxes on the rich and slashing aid to the poor, very much in line with Rand’s worship of the successful and contempt for “moochers.”
This last point is important. In pushing for draconian cuts in Medicaid, food stamps and other programs that aid the needy, Mr. Ryan isn’t just looking for ways to save money. He’s also, quite explicitly, trying to make life harder for the poor — for their own good.
In March, explaining his cuts in aid for the unfortunate, he declared, “We don’t want to turn the safety net into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people into lives of dependency and complacency, that drains them of their will and their incentive to make the most of their lives.”
HIGHLIGHTS2008 highlights on Poverty and Income in US
The official poverty rate in 2008 was 13.2 percent, up from 12.5 percent in 2007. This was the first statistically significant annual increase in the poverty rate since 2004, when poverty increased to 12.7 percent from 12.5 percent in 2003.
In 2008, 39.8 million people were in poverty, up from 37.3 million in 2007 -- the second consecutive annual increase in the number of people in poverty. The poverty rate in 2008 (13.2 percent) was the highest poverty rate since 1997 ....
Diaries, some of the many, dealing with poverty:
The Ryan Path to Poverty
Of Poverty and "Cheap" housing
Mark E Andersen, What is poverty?