It’s kind of like wearing an AIDS ribbon. Wear the ribbon and shows people you care. It doesn’t mean you’re doing shit about it, but you care.

That’s lame and its hypocritical.

I kinda agree with Jay on this bit. Yellow ribbons, pink, red, blue plus those rubber bracelets of many colors. And the magnets. Oh, God, the magnets.
Empty rhetoric.

No doubt you have, in the meantime, turned your own keen reading comprehension skills to Edwards’s poverty initiatives and realized you are a complete idiot.

Or he’s a jackass that is talking out of his ass, whichever.

I guess it’s only obvious to those who have extremely poor reading comprehension skills.

I’m done. I’ve wasted enough minutes of my life attempting to get you to comment on what I have actually written, and not what think is “obvious”, but it’s clear the time could be better spent….I don’t know, clipping my toenails or something. I’ll go back to ignoring you.

“…there isn’t this need for a massive government program like John Edwards is advocating to ‘fix’ the problem.”

what you really meant was we need a number of different government programs tailored to address different degrees of poverty. Hmmmh… but was Edwards really advocating one massive, one size fits all policy?

Of course he isn’t:
http://johnedwards.com/issues/poverty/

It’s obvious you went from arguing that poverty is not a problem that needs to be fixed to well, poverty is a problem that requires a lot of different fixes. If you look at Edwards’ website you’ll see that he has listed a variety of different initiatives to tackle a variety of different factors that impact poverty and quality of life from rural poverty to urban housing.

What was that about agendas Jay?

Actually, one has to have an amazing sense of humor to post comments here, especially since the majority of responses will stupid. Kind of like yours.

Somebody with a brain would be able to come away with something else.

First of all, there are degrees of poverty, ok simpleton? The poor people that live in places like Martin County, KY in Appalachia are seriously impoverished. Forget what kind of car they drive. Some of these people don’t even have access to clean water and sanitation facilities. Their definition of buying new clothes is when an older sibling grows out of theirs.

Now, should the same principles of addressing those poor people be applied to the people who are identified by the government as poor, but yet can still afford cars, new clothes, televisions, etc?

Answer: No.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

And that is what I have been saying all along. If you’d pull your head out of your ass for just one second, you’d realize that. But no. You have an agenda. And that agenda is to be an asshole somehow attribute to me (or anybody else) shit that gets made up in that little itty bitty mind of yours and proclaim, “This is what you really said!” like saying that I made the claim “we don’t need any new programs to address poverty because this person over here drives a Camry.” I mean, what does your brain do that you could possibly come to such a stupid fucking conclusion?

To suggest that poverty isn’t a problem

See what I mean? You’re debating a position not a single person here has taken. That’s what I mean when I talk about your intellectual dishonesty.

You would rather paper over the problem than address the real conditions of people’s lives.

No, what I would rather do is make sure that the problems being addressed are not one huge “one size fits all” ‘plan’ that doesn’t take into account the differing degrees of poverty in this country.

You and Rector suggest that owning a five or ten year old camry or color tv somehow eliminates the stress of coming up with rent, grocery and health care money every month.

Here we go again with more of your bullshit. I never suggested anything like that. Quit being such a brazen freaking liar.

Still waiting for those poverty statistics proving that poverty went up in the 10 years after the start of the Great Society.

I could care less whether or not somebody ‘wants’ me here or not. I’m sure you’re more content to have a big echo chamber to hang out, but it’s an open comment section. If Oliver wants to ban me, he’s free to do so.

Classic. How old are you? Like four?

Jay you wrote:

The point being, while there are people that fit the technical definition of poor, there isn’t this need for a massive government program like John Edwards is advocating to ‘fix’ the problem.

What else is someone to take away from this except that you don’t think there’s a need for any new programs to address poverty in this country because some poor people own camrys?

There is a legitimate debate about how best to measure poverty in this country, whether the measure should be based on income or expenditures or a combination of both. As per the national Poverty Center:

Traditional measures of poverty are based on income: if income is below a given threshold, then the family is determined to be poor. Some economists have suggested that a family’s well-being is better measured by their total spending rather than their total income. That is, some families can have a satisfactory standard of living even if they have low current income. This may be due to the fact that the family can support consumption by drawing down assets.

At the same time, some empirical evidence suggests that low-income families with little or no assets are able to maintain consumption patterns that exceed their reported income. One possibility is that these low-income families are establishing credit card debt or borrowing on the equity in their home, perhaps jeopardizing their future financial security. Alternatively, these families may be receiving assistance from family and friends to buffer their low income.

Now i’m not sure how long a working poor mother can live high on the hog by drawing down the assets of her designer jeans and used camry but I’m willing to bet it ain’t long. To suggest that poverty isn’t a problem because poor people can still live beyond their means by drawing down assets, racking up credit debt or borrowing from others is totally insane.

You would rather paper over the problem than address the real conditions of people’s lives.

You and Rector suggest that owning a five or ten year old camry or color tv somehow eliminates the stress of coming up with rent, grocery and health care money every month.

That’s just right wing bullshit.

If you’re so bored go away. No one really wants you here anyway. Maybe you can go find Frank (but don’t bring him back here).

If you’re so bored go away. No one really wants you here anyway. Maybe you can go find Frank (but don’t bring him back here).

Prove it. I posted figures from the census that said that poverty had fallen 40% by 1975. So prove that poverty grew in 10 years of the Great Society or STFU. I won’t hold my breath. If history is a guide you will ignore it or change the subject (or both).

Getting your butt kicked and now your bored.