Are we afraid to be unabashedly against poverty, now?

[Guaranteed]

I'm looking at the phrasing of so many of these responses to the Edwards threads (Really, the anti-Edwards thread-threads). Some of them are downright...well, weird.

Just paraphrasing, one person says well, sure, I'd like to to help the poor, but, you know, I want to help the rich, too....?

...Wah? Are you concerned they're not happy, don't have enough friends? Is this a Mr. Burns/Scrooge type thing?

With all the complaints about the "Edwards bashing," I've got to say that I've hardly seen any. Not ENOUGH, maybe. What I've seen is a lot of bootlicking. The results of years- years, seriously- of conditioning by the media. You better watch it that you don't step out of line- or you ain't getting that promotion. That kind of stuff.

Sure, that guy may have 15 billion dollars over there, while the guy on the other side eats four times per week. But that's perfectly justifiable. Didn't you know that?

I dunno, folks. Maybe you oughta turn off your TV's, start looking around more and thinking. Really think about your values, your reasoning behind some of these ideas. At the very LEAST, a lot of these ideas have just been so damned simplistic. They were utterly careless.

And, you know, people really don't have to do this. Those that even entertain ideas of helping with problems so unbelievably huge as poverty are extraordinary. Those that actually act on it and make sacrifices are probably super-human. To hold oneself to those kinds of standards, where one had absolutely nothing to do with the plight of others, yet takes responsibility for it, is godly, really.

So I'm not saying this to make people feel bad. But I really do expect more of us.

[JVS]

1. YES! THE POOR FUCKING SUCK!

[Guaranteed]

2. LOL nt

[JVS]

3. Goddamned losers who can't work at all, or are dipshits who can only get $5.15 an hour!

These parasites should be bleached from the toilets in which they dwell :sarcasm:

[Quixote1818]

4. Coulden't agree more! Thank You! K& R nt

[Buddyblazon]

5. No...

but the world isn't black and white like you guys would like.

I am certainly for the poor...as I grew up poor...and I am lower middle class now.

But please tell me again why I should hate wealthy people?

[Guaranteed]

6. This isn't black and white thinking. This is exactly the opposite.

I didn't say you should hate wealthy people.

What I am saying, though, is that on that gray scaler there are some very, very stark contrasts that constitute clear injustice. Those should be acted upon- not by REVOLUTION, which is, oddly, what many people think of when it comes to allowing some people to eat- but simple legislation, public discourse and prudent leadership.

[Buddyblazon]

7. Oh...

then I agree with you 100%.

;)

[The Straight Story]

8. I expect more of the people I employ and pay

like the congress.

They have the power to change the laws and help more people - yet it seems they often choose the easy way to keep their paychecks coming in.

You and I can and probably should do more, but then so should the people we pay (and a lot more than min wage I might add). I did not elect them so that they could blow off the poor, I elected them so that they could use our collective money to help them. And yet there they sit paying out more for a war to kill people in Iraq and screw the poor here.

[JVS]

9. here, check out how this DUer stuck it to the Povs!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=68600&mesg_id=68927

[Porcupine]

10. Truly, In the US the poor are used as a public warning.

Since we have huge sections of the populous which are not expected to work at all. The rich, the blind, deaf people, people with certain handicaps, children and well...tourists.

If you have a mental illness such as depression, schizophrenia, alcoholsim or drug addiction you better get your shit together or we will throw you into the streets.

I had a lecture today from a non-working retired woman. She hasn't worked for pay for over ten years and expects another 10 years at least of non work. If you count the 18 years she was growing up she expects to spend fully 1/2 of her life not working for a living. She was railing about how lazy the homeless were.

The homeless are kept out there as a threat to the rest of us.

[JVS]

11. kick

[rman]

12. not "we" - but some of 'us' as of quite recently,

apparently.

[Rosemary2205]

13. If the poor get more money they'll contribute more to global destruction

I read today that eating breakfast make us murderers. Now if we start helping the poor and they start eating breakfast then they would be murderers too.

:crazy:

[treestar]

14. Not at all, you don't have to be against the rich to help the

poor. The rich will always be with us. It's the poor we need to help. I am happy with being middle class and don't feel like the rich have to go away. It's the poor I want to help. The rich who don't help the poor are irritating but they can just go about their business. The rich who do help the poor, like Edwards, need encouragement, not insults.

[ananda]

15. Yes, basically, and..

It's disguised as being pro-work instead of anti-poor people.
It's racism and classism using codespeak.

When white people were poor and distressed during the
Great Depression, they took every handout available.
To them, Roosevelt was god.

Now that dark skinned people are mostly the ones who are
poor and distressed, the formerly liberal whites are shouting
welfare to work, just grit your teeth and hunker down at those
three or four minimum wage jobs that whites want to keep low
wage so that they can keep their overly large and ugly
McMansions, servants, landscapers, and nannies. Ugghhh.

Sue

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

16. Ostentatious displays of wealth are vulgar.

Something the nouveau riche are fond of. The "if you got it, flaunt it" definition of "success" deserves to be reviled, and laughed at, as should those who indulge in it.

[Annces]

17. There really is a segment of DU who cheer-leads being a millionaire

It is their business, but oh, we should help the "underprivileged". As if there is no correlation between the two.

[Lerkfish]

18. here's the unfortunate reality: we need campaign reform

I don't have a dog in this fight (meaning I'm not bashing millionaires OR poor people), but the stupid reality of the way our campaign funding situation is set up is that the only people who can independently run for large office ARE the independently wealthy.
that doesn't make them automatically against the poor -- Kennedy is a good example.
The only other alternative is corporate sponsorship.

Campaigns, as they run now, are too expensive to run on a shoestring.

Personally, I don't like it, but I see no way of changing it as long as those who benefit from the current system run the system.

I've often suggested we need to limit how much a candidate can spend to an absurdly small amount, so that the guy who works at the hardware store can run if he wants to. The costs of running campaigns simply is too prohibitive for joe blow to do it.

There has to be a way to make campaigning within the reach of the common man. At present, it simply is not. The best we can hope for is a millionaire or a corporatists with a conscience, who will work for constituents without being in their same socioeconomic class.