back to the poorhouse

This whole thing about poor people is kind of a lie by both parties. Nobody is going to eliminate poor people. We will always have them with us no? I think we have discussed this before, but back in medieval times they were just part of the social milieu. Way back further than that, before the guys with funny hats took over the religion, Christianity was all about helping the poor, I believe that was the main thing that they did. I’m not a bible scholar like Beagles, but I believe the new testament is full of the poor.

Even after the guys with the funny hats took over the religion they still at least pretended that they were concerned about the poor. If your soul was troubling you, you could always give some alms, not sure it always got into the hands of the poor people, but it was always good to have them around in case some coins trickled down. And you know you didn’t have to worry about them, because this life on earth was just a snippet, and the main thing was getting into the big show, so rather than giving them a hearty breakfast it was better to give them a glimpse of the divine, which called for fancy churches and gaudy robes for the guys with the funny hats. Anyway there was always a place for the poor so there was no reason to try to eliminate them.

Probably it was the prots who screwed that up. They had this work ethic thing and those idle poor people, it was kind of embarrassing having them around, and it would probably be a good thing to lift them up into moderate prosperity. Well how do you do that?

Very, very, roughly I think the two parties have two different solutions to the problem. The dems want to give them stuff, food stamps, welfare, free little perks here and there to make the trip up to moderate prosperity a little easier. And the reps in the words of Beagles to provide opportunities for the poor to climb out of poverty. which translates to the republicans, as does everything else, as tax cuts for the rich. Unbind those sainted job creators from taxes and regulations, and by gum they will be creating jobs to beat the band, because salting away big sacks of cash is only secondary to them, they are mainly interested in creating jobs to help the poor. If Jesus came back today He would be wearing a silk hat and be hedging funds.

Maybe a little unfair, because Beagles is not exactly a republican, though he would never vote for a dem, which I think makes him a rep for all practical purposes. But anyway, neither party is going to eliminate the poor. Actually I don’t think it can ever be done because the poor are defined as people who have less money than everybody else, and there are always going to be people with less money than everybody else. Well unless we can achieve Obama’s socialist dream where there will be a guy on every street corner who will make you show him the contents of your wallet and if you have too much he will take some away, and if you have too little, he will give you some, but probably that is not going to happen anytime soon.

One thing about poor, or not quite moderately prosperous, people, is that when you give them money they spend it, which is one reason why it seems like extending unemployment benefits would be a good idea to stimulate consumer spending. Rich people are not that good consumer spenders. They might buy a new yacht every now and then, but that’s only a bit of the money they take in. I think mostly they buy more stocks and bonds, but that’s supposed to be good for the economy too, so I don’t know. Doesn’t it sound like what they are always telling us is that to be good citizens we should spend more, oh and we should save more too? I don’t know about that one.

I tried to research the Michigan voter ID law. It seems like there was one in 1996 which was unconstitutional until 2005, and then recently there was an extension of it which your gov vetoed, but I couldn’t find out who held the levers of power when this was going on, but I am going to go out on a limb and predict that all this ID stuff was the instigation of reps, because a dem would no more make it harder to keep dem votes from the polls than he would kiss the butt of a solid gold statue of Ronald Reagan.

I like the idea of not letting pols take to the airwaves. I am no media basher, but you have to wonder how much they must love political campaigns. It is like Christmas and St Paddy’s day for them.