Gretta Van Susteren in a interview with Col. Allen West yesterday wanted to know what Republicans or Democrats were going to do to support poor communities, but when Col. West laid it out for her (open the free market up, allow small business to thrive, jobs proliferate, crime drops, etc.) she still says she wants to know when there's going to be any talk about helping the poor. THAT'S ALL POLITICIANS DO IS TALK ABOUT IT! They talk about it, give the poor some bread crumbs, get them dependent and hooked on government aid, then those people (in many many cases) become professional aid seekers who figure out how to make more not working than they could working. Then those who do work one, two, and three jobs get resentful and go around angry all the time with a chip on their shoulder; angry and belligerent toward the customers and their bosses further breaking down the only thing keeping us from becoming a slothful mass of human sludge living off the pittance of a poorly managed criminal central government.
Benjamin Franklin said it best when he said, “I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it." I have heard pundits on both sides of the issue misquote, misrepresent, and misinterpret this quote so many times, I feel obligated (not that anybody is reading this) to share the entire quote in context. Here is the entire article entitled 'On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor' from the the London Chronicle, printed November 29, 1766: "For my own part, I am not so well satisfied of the goodness of this thing. I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. -- I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer. There is no country in the world where so many provisions are established for them; so many hospitals to receive them when they are sick or lame, founded and maintained by voluntary charities; so many alms-houses for the aged of both sexes, together with a solemn general law made by the rich to subject their estates to a heavy tax for the support of the poor. Under all these obligations, are our poor modest, humble, and thankful; and do they use their best endeavours to maintain themselves, and lighten our shoulders of this burthen? -- On the contrary, I affirm that there is no country in the world in which the poor are more idle, dissolute, drunken, and insolent."
