I admit it.  I'm on Face Book.  It is a fun way to get in touch, and stay in touch, with friends from times past. Because of the service, I have reunited with quite a few friends from thirty or more years ago, if only through the electronic ether. One of those old friends I have rediscovered is a young lady who attended high school with me. "Carol," as I'll call her for the sake of this story, is a delightful person with a sunny disposition and a warm, giving heart. In keeping with her giving spirit, she has chosen a career in social work. She means well. However, she recently wrote a note for all who are on her Face Book friends list that dramatically demonstrates the uphill battle America faces in the direction of political thought and our future. Her note posited this question, aided by television writer Lee Eisenberg:







Ah, the wisdom of the limousine liberal. Well, the last thing I want to do is get into a semantic argument over the use and meaning of statistics. As the tired, trite old saying goes, "One can make statistical data prove or disprove any given point." Even with that said, still I would like to point out the following compelling statistics:







Furthermore, in 1980, when the top income tax rate was 70%, the richest 1% paid only 19% of all income taxes. Now, with a top marginal rate of 35%, they pay more than double that share. [2]

How much federal treasury has been spent in the euphemistic "War on  Poverty" initiated by the Lyndon  Johnson  administration?   Well,
Is there a class war in the USA? Yes, and it is waged against our poorest members...

"We live in a country that once celebrated itself as egalitarian, yet 1 percent of the population -- nearly 3 million people -- currently has as much money as the 100 million people at the bottom of the ramp."  ~ Lee Eisenberg
RAPTOR REPUBLIC

      
        yesterday's ideals... tomorrow's promise
class war?  really?            (posted 8/2/09)
“The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time.”

  President Lyndon Baines Johnson, May 22, 1964
estimates range from $8-10 trillion since the inception of the egalitarian crusade of 1964. Let that fact sink in for a moment. $8 to 10 trillion. Where has the money gone? Just look at the fantastic myriad of federal programs spawned by LBJ's  administration.
Gaze upon cities across the country with dilapidated Section 8 HUD housing, old and new, that resemble Dresden Germany after the fire bombing of World War II -- housing meant to alleviate homelessness and create a foundation for a modicum of dignified living that has turned into breeding grounds for drug trading, gang crime, and overall misery. Consider the destruction of the black family unit in America. Once a thriving, vital segment of society in the 1950s, the race-targeted federal aid programs through the decades have fostered only the disintegration of their families, inordinate levels of adult illiteracy, disproportional drug abuse, school drop out rates, crime, and incarceration rates -- especially among black males.

Yes, the lovingly applied welfare state so meticulously crafted in the 1960s, and expanded with religious fervor every decade since, has done wonders to eradicate poverty. Yeah, right. And I'm the Czar of all Russia. What it HAS managed to do is create a more or less permanent underclass, perpetuated by state and federal largesse. This underclass, in turn, is groomed by its oh so caring legislative benefactors who cynically know the government programs are utter failures. But, as long as the liberal elitists continue to produce enough monies to keep their constituents in a basic level of functional poverty, then these benefactors can be assured of homogeneous minority voting blocs of 90% or better year after disgusting year.

Nearly a quarter century later, in January 1988, President Ronald Reagan delivered a State of the Union address in which he declared that the War on Poverty had failed: “My friends, some years ago, the Federal Government declared war on poverty, and poverty won.” The remark brought laughter from the joint session of Congress that Reagan addressed. Yet President Reagan meant what he said that night:










President Reagan was too kind to the architects of 'War on Poverty' when he said they had proceeded with the "best of intentions." Democrats have been using these programs for forty-five years to ensure election and re-election for themselves. It has been the vilest and most cynical display of political demagoguery in our nation's history. The Left, so insistent to be looked upon as the political movement with the only concern for the least fortunate in our society, are the very ones perpetuating the poverty. Yet, their attitude toward those whom they purport to champion is encapsulated by a recently issued and telling remark by sitting Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The Justice infamously spoke this Freudian slip regarding the poor and minorities in the country when she said, "Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae – in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of." (emphasis added) [4] In this Clinton-era Supreme Court appointment, we see the true attitude of liberal elitists toward their natural constituencies. This is nothing short of Heinrich Himmler's hideous eugenics efforts during World War II. Just imagine if Justice Roberts or Justice Scalia had spewed that very same elitist diatribe. The wails for justice would have been deafening.
Today the Federal Government has 59 major welfare programs and spends more than $100 billion a year on them. What has all this money done? Well, too often it has only made poverty harder to escape. Federal welfare programs have created a massive social problem. With the best of intentions, government created a poverty trap that wreaks havoc on the very support system the poor need most to lift themselves out of poverty: the family. Dependency has become the one enduring heirloom, passed from one generation to the next, of too many fragmented families. [3]
How much is enough? The transfer of wealth from those who produce to those who choose not to produce grows every year. Our politicians sometimes give lip service to the virtues of a free market economy, but even that is waning, as the Obama Administration and its henchmen are working overtime to extol the virtues of collectivism.  Many Americans are waking up. The question is, are they awaking too late?  (Picture courtesy of FreakingNews.com)
With programs fueled by federal, state, and local income taxes, charitable giving has been taken away from traditionally effective sources. Prior to the nation's Marxist inspired progressive movement, giving was a matter of family, church, and civic effort. Families circled wagons when economic hard times came. Churches were centers for distributing money, food, and clothing to those in need.  Business and  philanthropic  leaders  stepped  in  when  greater  needs  arose.
Was poverty 'conquered' prior to the Great Society? No. Will poverty ever be eradicated? Perhaps only in science fiction movies. What the well-intentioned fail to realize is that poverty
is not the result of a biological germ that will go away when the right antibiotic is found. Poverty, and its opposite entity, success, are conditions of the human spirit. Government's answer to the problem has been to offer analgesics for the immediate pain and discomfort of poverty. The analgesics of unending government assistance have had a powerful narcotic and addicting effect. They ignore the root causes of the problem which they themselves have created. The trillions of dollars taken coercively from taxpayers to cure the poverty 'disease' have not only failed to provide a cure, the money has exacerbated the condition. New generations of those receiving the Great Society treatment regimen are showing signs that the 'disease' of poverty has metastasized for certain groups.

Economic Egalitarianism, Marxism, Communism, Liberalism -- call it what you will. These are the clinical terms for the manifestation of soul-destroying collectivism. Our Founding Fathers, so brilliant in their foresight and so maligned by the leftists of today, never promised economic prosperity or equality of outcome. They laid the groundwork  for all American citizens to enjoy political freedom to live as they chose, free from as much governmental intervention as possible consistent with law and order. Yes, we are a politically egalitarian society. Especially given our tumultuous past, one needs only to observe the most recent presidential election to see that political equality, for better or worse, is a reality in America. What this most recent election has wrought also is the very real threat of forcing an economic egalitarianism onto the American people through the coercion of political power. It is a path we cannot take. Poverty will not disappear as a result of this process. It will only grow and be shared by everyone. Have the ruling political class and the constituents who consistently put them in office learned nothing from the fall of the Soviet Union?
They won't directly admit it, but this is how the Leftist Elitists view most Americans (other than themselves). Their ultimate vision of our society, whether through socialized health care, automobile choices, public schools, or government assistance of any kind,  provides a  bleak picture for post-capitalism  America. (Photo courtesy of drudgereport.com)
Even though the political Left wants to make all biblical references suspect, we are led to affirm the admonition of Jesus in the New Testament: “For ye have the poor always with you” (Matthew 26:11). Some two thousand years ago, one of the wisest teachers suggested that the problem of poverty was truly intractable. Is there any governmental poverty program left that we have not implemented one way or another in the literally hundreds of antipoverty laws Congress has passed since 1964? Maybe we should just take another $10 trillion and hand it out as a lump-sum payment to the 37 million Americans who are poor. The expenditure might  be cheap if
a one-time massive payment would make poverty disappear. Apparently, there are dimensions of poverty that money alone cannot solve. That is our first important conclusion. [5] [6]

So, Carol, if you are reading this, would you please tell me how war is being waged against our poorest citizens? If you mean it is being waged by the political Left in the form of a perverse and growing welfare state, then I agree with you whole heartedly. As a side bar, have you perhaps noticed the characteristics of the "poor" in America? The vast majority own and use mobile telephones. They own DVD players, stereo systems, iPods, automobiles, and typically consume far more food calories than are necessary, as the poor in America are the most obese segment of our population. The disposable income of the "poor" would exceed the dreams of avarice of people languishing in developing nations. Just ask Barack Hussein Obama's half brother living in squalor in Kenya. A total rethinking of the nature of poverty and government's role in ameliorating it must be created. The American taxpayer, who plays by the rules, raises his/her family, and asks for nothing from government is stretched past the breaking point. Should there be a safety net for those who are truly disabled or otherwise disadvantaged beyond the ability to care for themselves? Absolutely. A just society mandates that the most vulnerable of its citizens be protected. The dismantling of the Great Society would free untold reserves for those who are truly deserving. A rapprochement with private charitable efforts, through real faith-based initiatives, tax incentives for charitable giving, and elimination of government strictures against families is needed, too. A revitalized, robust American economy that returns to its first principles of liberty in commerce will once again become the great engine of prosperity it had been before. A rising tide truly raises all ships -- but that tide is not, nor ever shall be, government.


Lee A. Heilig

1.   Source: IRS, Statistics of Income Division, September 2006.
2.   online.wjs.com reprint from The Wall Street Journal, page A20
3. Corsi, Jerome R. and Blackwell, J. Kenneth, "Democrats' War on Poverty Has Failed" from humanevents.com, 6 September 2006
4.  wdtprs.com/blog/2009/07/7143/
5.  Corsi, Jerome R. and Blackwell, J. Kenneth, "Democrats' War on Poverty Has Failed" from humanevents.com, 6 September 2006
6.  (editor's note:  With all due respect to Messrs Corsi and Blackwell, I prefer to refer to the King of Kings as THE wisest teacher -- not just one of them.
Who is to blame for chronic poverty? Don't even consider looking at the American taxpayer. With an estimated $8-10 trillion in black hole wealth transfers over the last 45 years, the tax payer is tapped out. Yet, this is how untold millions more Americans may end up if Obama and his ilk have their way with the economy. Who will pay for housing, welfare, food stamps, "Cash for Clunkers," medical care, college tuition, etc. then? As far as Ruthie is concerned, she is one of the darlings of the elitist Left, and a supposed champion of the poor. Where is the outcry over her genocidal racist remarks? The hypocrisy is nauseating.       (Background photo by Alex Barth)
"Frankly, I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of."

         Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg