Regular readers of this blog (both of them) know that it\u2019s all about coming to the defense of the underdog\u2014in this case, the guy running for president who comes out and says he\u2019s\u201cnot concerned about the very poor\u201d: Mitt Romney.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitt has good reasons not to be concerned! First of all the \u201cvery poor\u201d don\u2019t vote<\/a>. That may be because they can\u2019t afford gas to their polling place, or they\u2019re incarcerated for stealing bread or, as sick and elderly poor, they no longer leave their hovels; or they could just be too busy playing Angry Birds on their iPads, but that seems unlikely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s take a look at the reason for Mitt\u2019s giddy optimism about the non-plight of the extremely poverty stricken: those \u201csafety nets\u201d that are doing such a swell job for the very poor thrashing in them like indigent mackerels:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The other tenuous strands in the safety net\u2014Welfare, food stamps, federal subsidies for home heating, funding for health clinics and after school programs\u2014are also targets for elimination, privatization or defunding according to the splintery planks of the GOP platform. After which Romney, presumably, will be \u201cconcerned.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s the thing about the very poor: they\u2019ve been very poor for generations<\/em>. For the vast majority of Americans, being born into poverty means staying there; it\u2019s passed, father to son and down again, like a genetic disorder\u2026or the same way the wealthy pass along family jewels, but much less shiny. They probably didn\u2019t lose their jobs under Obama\u2019s lackluster leadership because, since they\u2019re mostly elderly, disabled, or without skills, they haven\u2019t had a job since 1979. Their savings haven\u2019t vanished because they\u2019re not invested in the stock market. Also, they have no savings. Their cars haven\u2019t been repossessed because they\u2019re up on blocks, and their mortgages aren\u2019t \u201cunderwater\u201d because they couldn\u2019t afford a mortgage in the first place. Or water. Rising food prices just means they eat less, and let\u2019s face it: they can stand to lose a few pounds; but at least soaring utility bills aren\u2019t a problem because they\u2019re stealing electricity from the streetlamp where Uncle Fred electrocuted himself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, it makes perfect sense for Mitt not to be concerned with these people because he can\u2019t scare them into voting for him.<\/em> They care less about who\u2019s elected president every four years than the rest of us do about Olympic luging. Because they know that no matter who\u2019s in the White House, they are serially and generationally fucked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Regular readers of this blog (both of them) know that it\u2019s all about coming to the defense of the underdog\u2014in this case, the guy running for president who comes out and says he\u2019s\u201cnot concerned about the very poor\u201d: Mitt Romney. Mitt has good reasons not to be concerned! First of all the \u201cvery poor\u201d don\u2019t vote. That […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/eatthepoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/eatthepoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/eatthepoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eatthepoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eatthepoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/eatthepoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71,"href":"http:\/\/eatthepoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions\/71"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/eatthepoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eatthepoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eatthepoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}