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White Poverty and Me
Townhall.com ^ | March 10, 2016 | Cal Thomas

Posted on 03/10/2016 8:28:16 AM PST by Kaslin

In his continuing effort to pit races and classes against each other, Democratic presidential candidate and socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) has said that if you are white, "you don't know what it's like to be poor."

He should drive some of the roads I've driven in West Virginia, among other places. Some of the homes of the white poor look like throwbacks from an earlier time.

Sanders attempted to "clarify" his comment (a political synonym for walking it back when it didn't play well) during a town hall meeting Monday night in Detroit. Fox News anchor Bret Baier asked him about his remark and Sanders replied, "I know about white poverty. There is no candidate in this race who has talked more about poverty than I have."

Therein lies the problem. The left talks a lot about poverty, but when it comes to programs and ideas to help people climb out of poverty their only solution is to spend more money. If money alone were enough to extricate people from poverty and help them sustain themselves with a job and a strong family, then the more than $1 trillion spent on anti-poverty programs since the Great Society was launched by President Johnson in 1964 would have reduced the number of poor people in America. And yet, the poverty rate changes very little. A rational person might conclude that spending more money on programs that have failed to achieve their stated goals is not the right answer.

In April and May of 1964, President Johnson and the first lady, Lady Bird Johnson, toured the Appalachian states. After their visit he vowed to wipe out poverty. He didn't and his successors haven't either.

What do I, a now "prosperous" white guy, know about poverty?

In 1965, I was a private first class in the U.S. Army, working at Armed Forces Radio in New York City for the astronomical wage of $99 a month. All of us enlisted men had second jobs to make ends meet. Mine was as an engineer at WOR-TV. I had no car, the subway was 10 cents (soon to jump to 15 cents, producing cries from the left that it would harm the poor). I had no savings and as one payday approached I had only a dime in my pocket for a one-way trip to work. Had the paycheck not arrived, I had no idea how to get home to our little apartment in Elmhurst, Queens. Hitchhiking in New York City was not an option.

What I did have was incentive. I did not accept my poverty status as the final verdict on a young life. To paraphrase the song, if I couldn't make it in America, I couldn't make it anywhere. And so I kept at it until my Army discharge and then I moved back to Washington where I finished college, worked at a civilian media job and persisted until breaks came.

While poverty does not have simple solutions, there are solutions. They begin with relaying stories to the poor about people who used to be in their situation but liberated themselves from a life of want and need by making the right life choices. Inspiration and hope do not come from government. They come from within. They also come from churches, more of which can and should "adopt" a poor family and help them move out of poverty.

"You gotta have hope, mustn't sit around and mope," says the song from the musical "Damn Yankees." Where does anyone hear that in our blame, envy and entitlement political discourse?

Where have you gone Horatio Alger? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections
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1 posted on 03/10/2016 8:28:16 AM PST by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

The people now in their 20s and 30s, (my children), did not know poverty and actually I never missed any meals but I do remember when I was in 5th grade that my parents did not have the 25 cents I needed for dues for Girls Scouts. That was in the late 50s. My dad had been laid off because he had integrated the Houston Bus Terminal. His company offered to transfer him to anywhere in the US outside the deep south but we waited a year for my brother to graduate from HS.

My grandmother lived with us my whole youth and she shared her life which actually was close to middle class for the time but she grew up on the prairie in the late 19th century. She and her four siblings and parents lived in a three room house. They bathed fully only once per winter because of the wood had to be chopped and the water hauled. My other grandmother, when I knew her in the late 50s before she died, lived in a two room house with her sister. There was no running water.


2 posted on 03/10/2016 8:39:06 AM PST by Mercat
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To: Kaslin

“A rational person might conclude that spending more money on programs that have failed to achieve their stated goals is not the right answer.”

And more money will be spent. The Beltway crowd is less than rational when their prime interests are buying votes.

If we had a two party system it may have not gotten this bad.

A remark was made about obamacare, that if we just gave those without health insurance free insurance, it would have been a lot easier on the tax payer. But obamacare, like welfare, is not about the welfare of citizens or tax paers, it’s about power.

DC needs to be cleaned out, starting by flushing the Republican party of the GOPe and de-RINOizing those worth keeping.

Trump is a good start.


3 posted on 03/10/2016 8:40:26 AM PST by redfreedom (Voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil.)
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To: Kaslin

Well, this useless POS did live in a maple syrup hut with a dirt floor once. Mainly because he was too lazy to get an actual job. Then he got a “real” job in gov and has been on the dole ever since. He wouldn’t know real poverty if it slapped him upside the head. If you didn’t see the dem squabble last night, you missed his inference that “some” in the repub race will be kicking in doors in the middle of the night to round up and deport 11 million immigrants. Hmmmm. Was that maybe a hitlarian rock tossed at Trump?


4 posted on 03/10/2016 8:41:40 AM PST by rktman (Enlisted in the Navy in '67 to protect folks rights to strip my rights. WTH?!)
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To: Mercat

My mother grew up dirt poor as in India rural level dirt poor.

She would have traded places in an instant with a modern day urban “poor” person in an INSTANT had she had the option to do so...


5 posted on 03/10/2016 8:47:37 AM PST by GraceG (The election doesn't pick the next president, it is an audition for "American Emperor"...)
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To: Mercat

Thanks for that.

The Dems want to re-life the early 60’s movements for ever.


6 posted on 03/10/2016 8:48:27 AM PST by ifinnegan (Democrats kill babies and harvest their organs to sell)
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To: Kaslin

How many times have we ben lectured on ingrained racism?

Well that is exactly what Sanders displayed with his idiotic comment.

It shows the depth of the racist brainwashing among liberals.

His remarks rank right up there in stupidity with CNN’s Chris Cuomo’s description of black French muslim terrorists as “African-American.”


7 posted on 03/10/2016 8:50:29 AM PST by Iron Munro (Everyone has a plan till they get punched in the mouth -- Mike Tyson)
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To: Kaslin

We lived in a house built in the late 1800’s, had potatoes for every meal, drove a 49 Hudson and a 60 Rambler, rode old rusty bikes, wore our tennis shoes to rags, heated the house with a wood stove, and have no regrets.


8 posted on 03/10/2016 8:52:20 AM PST by lurk
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To: Kaslin
And yet, the poverty rate changes very little.

That's because "poverty" is identified as having an income a certain percentage below the median. Regardless of how much money (or stuff) people have or don't have, the "poverty rate" remains pretty constant because it's defined that way.

9 posted on 03/10/2016 8:57:31 AM PST by Tax-chick (Have a colonoscopy first thing in the morning, and nothing worse will happen the rest of the day.)
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To: Kaslin

I knew a guy in the Army from WV who said he joined because his family was living in an old bus that was up on blocks. He said they still went to the creek to get water and had no electricity. He lived in the barracks and sent most of his money home. He absolutely LOVED the chow hall!


10 posted on 03/10/2016 9:08:58 AM PST by rfreedom4u (Islam is a cult of hatred and sexual deviants.)
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To: Kaslin
Not 10 miles from affluent Oviedo, FL it is easy to find homes with no window glass or screens and, due to their well pumps having failed, the WHITE folks living in those homes carry their drinking water in old milk jugs filled at their "more prosperous" neighbors' homes. You can find dirt poor WHITE FOLKS everywhere (except perhaps in Bernie Sanders' Vermont sphere of experience!
11 posted on 03/10/2016 9:26:12 AM PST by ExSES (the "bottom-line")
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To: rfreedom4u

Detroit has whites on almost every block, much of which is very very poor.

It was a terrible comment.

12 posted on 03/10/2016 9:27:12 AM PST by Jack Black ( "Disarmament of a targeted group is one of the surest early warning signs of future genocide")
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red=black
blue=white
orange=Hispanic
green=Asian
13 posted on 03/10/2016 9:28:21 AM PST by Jack Black ( "Disarmament of a targeted group is one of the surest early warning signs of future genocide")
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To: Jack Black
You don't see the many blue dots in the red at this magnification, but in the larger one you do.

Pretty easy to see 8 Mile Rd. Which is why everyone from Detroit understood the title of that movie and what it meant.

14 posted on 03/10/2016 9:32:01 AM PST by Jack Black ( "Disarmament of a targeted group is one of the surest early warning signs of future genocide")
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To: Kaslin

Have we run out of white bums, the white unemployed, and delapidated, majority white trailer parks?


15 posted on 03/10/2016 9:34:41 AM PST by Crucial (At the heart all leftidsts is the fear that the truth is bigger than themselves.)
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To: Jack Black

Most dangerous neighborhood in America, one of 5 of the top 15 in Detroit.

16 posted on 03/10/2016 9:40:49 AM PST by Jack Black ( "Disarmament of a targeted group is one of the surest early warning signs of future genocide")
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To: Mercat

I was poor when I was little, but did not know it because we used to give canned food to the poor. : )

My dad began as an enlisted man in the Navy and later became a high ranking officer. We had five children.

I never developed a desire for things because we could not afford anything beyond necessities and that was touch and go. When I’m asked what I want for presents, I really can’t think of anything. It drives my husband and sons nuts. : )


17 posted on 03/10/2016 11:29:43 AM PST by SaraJohnson
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To: Kaslin

* “you don’t know what it’s like to be poor.” *

Bernie certainly doesn’t. He’s a millionaire.

I know LOTS of poor white people. Most of them work.

Bernie is a Racist!


18 posted on 03/10/2016 11:45:53 AM PST by PATRIOT1876 (The only crimes that are 100% preventable are those committed by illegal aliens)
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To: Mercat

“——when I was in 5th grade that my parents did not have the 25 cents I needed for dues for Girls Scouts. That was in the late 50s. “


Sounds like the way that I grew up——my grandchildren have been flying to vacation spots since they were babies.

They don’t have a clue.

.


19 posted on 03/10/2016 11:51:47 AM PST by Mears
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To: Mears

I got a pair of bright red slacks for Christmas. I loathed them. Never wore them. My poor mom.


20 posted on 03/10/2016 1:10:51 PM PST by Mercat
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