Kentucky showcases Paul Ryan's wrong-way war on poverty

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/16/1284613/-Kentucky-showcases-Paul-Ryan-s-wrong-way-war-on-poverty?detail=email

That Paul Ryan's one-man crusade against poverty has gotten off to a laughably bad start should have surprised no one. After all, his various "roadmaps" and GOP budgets have called for giving massive tax cuts for the rich,

slashing non-defense discretionary spending to its lowest share of the U.S. economy in generations, privatizing Social Security and turning Medicare into an underfunded voucher scheme, all measures certain to make poverty in America worse.

Ryan's claim that LBJ's War on Poverty exacerbated the problem wasthoroughly debunked and mocked by many of the same experts whose research he cited. And with his jeremiads about "makers and takers" and turning "the safety net into a hammock," Congressman Ryan displayed his disdain for the very people he pretends to want to help.

But with his "inarticulate" comment this week about lazy men "in our inner cities," Paul Ryan tried to put a face—a black face—on American poverty. As it turns out, Ryan's dog-whistle to the GOP's right-wing base wasn't merely cynical, it was also wrong.

After all, about two-thirds of the nation's 46.5 million people living in poverty are white. TheU.S. Census Bureau also informs us that the 17.7 percent poverty rate in rural areas is almost three points higher than the national average. (Poverty is highest in the South, which in 2012 was the only part of the country where it increased.)

In many cities and across the countryside, tectonic structural changes in regional economies, and not Paul Ryan's "tailspin of culture,"

are wiping out good paying jobs. The result is that many communities are sustained by a patchwork of federal and state programs helping to provide food assistance, income support, unemployment benefits, health care and more.

i've come to the conclusion that these republican rants don't matter to them as heard by reasonable people they careless because are not voting for them any way

this kind of rhetoric seals that deal, now stupidity does kick in when you realize you don't have the majority and continue throwing red meat you are just preaching to the choir, and the congregation has left the building.

falsely claiming inarticulation when you were definitive in your speech only exacerbates your deceitful oration, he and the rest may not know us but we have had decades to study them, dismissing us is now coming home to roost and will bite them where it hurts.

o put it another way, the faces of American poverty can be found in Rust Belt cities, in the Mississippi Delta and in Appalachia. And now—just as it did when LBJ launched his War on Poverty 50 years ago—Kentucky shows why.

At 19.4 percent (823,000 people), the Bluegrass State has the fifth highest poverty rate in the nation. But as dismal as those numbers are, there has been real improvement sincePresident Johnson made Martin County ground zero in his War on Poverty in 1964. There, as NPR recently documented, a poverty rate double the national average represents progress:

"In this south-central mountain country, over a third of the population is faced with chronic unemployment," says a government film on Johnson's visit. "Typical of this group is Tom Fletcher, his wife and eight children. Fletcher, an unemployed sawmill operator, earned only $400 last year and has been able to find little employment in the last two years."

At the time, the poverty rate in this coal-mining area was more than 60 percent...Today, the roads here are well-paved. People say the schools and hospitals are much better than they used to be. Still, Martin County remains one of the poorest counties in the country. Its poverty rate is 35 percent, more than twice the national average. Unemployment remains high. Only 9 percent of the adults have a college degree.

unfortunately for the republicans there is no other way their way or you get nothing, they are in charge and know it, how many of you made it that way and are "YOU" better off for putting them in charge since 2010 or do you feel the heat from their obstruction?