America, it pays to win.

Market St. © Robert Sommers

When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die.
Jean-Paul Sartre

In this polarized battle for America it doesn't take a genius to figure out that there are two dramatically different narratives being pushed regarding the rich, the poor and the economy. The left sees a bunch of exploitive, rich robber barons intent on punishing the poor and weak and the right 's world is inhabited by a bunch of lazy liberal freeloaders intent on sponging off the system who don't know the real meaning of the word poor.  Or work for that matter. Don't ask me where the truth lies. But I would like to point out some of the quotes and anecdotes of late that have caught my attention.
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First a few statistics. A 2008 U.S. Census Bureau/American Community Survey revealed that over 39 million Americans are currently living in poverty. 13.2% of our fellow citizens are living below the poverty threshold. One in ten americans are struggling to feed, clothe, educate and shelter.

A September 2011 study (Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010) commissioned by the U.S. Census Bureau revealed that the national poverty rate has risen to an astounding 15.1% (43.6 million), the highest since poverty rates were published in 1959.

22% of our children (18 and below) are now living in poverty.
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If you want an imbecilic quote in the United States, there is never a better place to start than with Iowa Congressman Steve King (that is if Texas Rep. Louis Gohmert isn't around.) According to King, it's not the rich who need to pay their fair share, the poor have to pay their fair share too.

"There are more and more people that are looking at others saying they shouldn't be making that much money because I'm not. And they don't feel as much guilt about the 72 different means tested welfare programs that we have," King said on CNN's "Starting Point."
"Today it's almost a government guarantee of a middle-income standard of living from all these [government safety net] programs we have. I like an America where people feel some guilt about that and they want to step up and help and carry their fair share of the work."

Fair enough, Steve. These out of work scofflaws don't know how good they really have it.


"There's a number approaching 100 million Americans of working age that are simply not in the workforce, and that includes the 13 million that are unemployed," King said. "Some can't do anything about that, some aren't willing to do anything about that. When you add that all up, roughly a third of Americans of working age are not contributing to the gross domestic product of the United States."
"They should do their fair share.""One of the things is, people are told they don't need to create opportunities," he said. "It's up to somebody else to offer them a job."

If I was Congressman King, I would feel very lucky to have a job. Because Steve, I kind of doubt that you would be able to get a job doing much beyond minimum wage with your lack of intelligence and without your cushy government job. I am quite certain that I wouldn't hire you as a dogcatcher.

King also speculated that Mitt and Ann Romney's values would be quite different if Ann had been collecting TANF  (temporary assistance for needy families ) benefits while staying home raising her sons.

"They wouldn’t be saying, 'Go out there and get a job and contribute to the economy and pay taxes.' They would be saying, 'Find a way to game the system,'" King said. "Mothers would start to teach that to the children even more ... because they would be rewarded for gaming the system."

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Count Pennsylvania Republican Senator Pat Toomey as another guy who doubts the intentions of the poor. Toomey is a former derivatives trader who is the ex president of the Club for Growth. He helped pioneer the credit derivatives swaps concept, whose meltdown helped propel the American economy into recession.

"There is a small segment of our society that absolutely needs a great deal of help because they can't really take care of themselves." 


Pat thinks that only a few people really need any help. The GOP senators' budget concludes that the current system of assistance "encourages dependency" and therefore should be reduced and changed to a state-run block grant program.
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Washington's Attorney General and senatorial candidate Rob McKenna is in a bit of hot water after his aide sent out tweets instructing handicapped people to get the hell out of the crosswalks faster and for foreign speakers to speak english.
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This Republican says that the poor breed like animals. South Carolina Lt. Governor Andre Bauer: Don't feed the poor. They'll breed. If you give a stray animal an ample food supply they will reproduce." 58% of the state's children get free school lunches.
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Newt Gingrich thinks that poor kids have no work ethic, unless it comes from doing something illegal. That's why we need to hire them as janitors. 
"Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and nobody around them who works. So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of "I do this and you give me cash"... unless it's illegal. I believe the kids could mop the floor and clean up the bathroom and get paid for it, and it would be OK."
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The Republican's adopted  Paul Ryan budget calls for spending 30 percent less than the White House on “income security” programs for the poor — that’s everything from food stamps to housing assistance to the earned-income tax credit. The Republicans also would repeal the Affordable Care Act, which provides health insurance coverage to 30 million people, and replace it with nothing. On top of that, they would slash Medicaid and the childrens’ health insurance plan, eliminating coverage from 14-27 million more people depending upon their success at eliminating rules that force states to cover poor people.
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More from the godfather and intellectual leader of the right, Rush Limbaugh:


Do you know any low-income people who want to get a better job? ... Do they even want to work?


The real problem with Romney's lack of concern for the very poor is that Romney favors any safety net at all.


47 Percent of the population is content to be slovenly, lazy takers.


Poor children receiving free school meals are wanton little waifs and serfs dependent on the state. 


There's another place if none of these options work to find food; there's always the neighborhood dumpster.
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Is it just me or does anybody else sense a little hostility here?  In listening to anecdotal stories from the poor in recent weeks, one thing keeps coming up. Many of these people had really good jobs a few years ago and would never believe the trouble they find themselves in today. Sometimes both parents lost their jobs and now they find themselves sleeping in their cars or shelters or otherwise at the end of their rope.


Is it any wonder we have had such an uptick in stories of murder suicides and people killing their children who they can no longer care for? Leslie and I know several people who have lost great jobs and are now scratching around. It is very humbling, to say the least. Many are older and have been replaced by young kids who will work for nothing.


If you are a wealthy person who has managed to forever remove yourself from the worry and the fray and beat the system through your hard work and ingenuity, I offer my deepest congratulations. Please try to have a little understanding and empathy for those who have not.