pouring money down a rathole

What, we have been taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor for the last 50 years in this country?  Why 50?  I guess maybe you are talking about the war on poverty which I don't think lasted much after Lyndon, and there wasn't that much given out even while Lyndon was in office because he ended up pouring much of our treasure down the rathole of Vietnam.

But to some extent we have been giving to the poor as long as, oh, recorded history.  Way back, let's go to early Christianity, though surely it was being done before them.  To the Christians it was simply a good deed.  It wasn't a matter of getting the poor back on their feet which nobody expected to happen, and I suppose it helped you enter the pearly gates, although you weren't supposed to bargain with God like that.  Just make Him happy and see what happens.

And that sort of thing has gone on forever, the giving of alms, the poorhouses, the United Charities.  I still give a buck every now and then to a bum on the street.  A buck doesn't mean much to me, but it probably means a lot to the bum, so aren't I increasing its value, like a good American?

There are those arguments about whether helping the poor should be the job of the charities or of the government.  There is Ayn Rand's reply to "Who will help the poor?"  "You can if you want to, Myself, I don't want to."

As a longtime reader of mine, you know that I divide the poor into three categories, the lazy, the nutsos, and the unfortunates.  I assume each category comprises roughly a third, though I have done no research on that.  Nobody wants to give any money to the lazies, I think we are obligated to give money to the nutsos because it's not their fault, and I think everybody wants to give to the unfortunates because we expect they will use it wisely, and we ourselves, us good citizens, know that there but for an unfortunate the grace of god go we.

I don't think the argument that we have given money to the poor in the past, and yet there are still poor people, so it obviously doesn't work, so we should stop doing it, is a very good argument.  Of course we will always have poor people.  Look at all the money we have spent on the army, and yet we still have enemies.

Lincoln was never rich in the sense that Nixon and Johnson became rich.  Just being a lawyer wasn't enough to make you rich in those days.  I don't know about those Lincoln quotes, or any famous person quotes, a person lives a long time and says a lot of things and you can pick and choose like in the bible and make any point you like.

I don't think you can make any progress on your research into the percentage of Indians in your county until you decide what your definition of Indian is, and even then if you do all that extensive research and come up with a number, somebody, like me, is apt to simply say, "That is not what a consider an Indian," and dismiss it out of hand.  And what difference does it make?  How would a higher percentage of Indians change anything?

Interesting point.  I have always identified myself as White on the census, as I am guessing you do.  Why do we do that?  We could say anything, and nobody would know better.