I do hope that everyone had a great day on Thanksgiving…I did….and since viewership is down on this Black Friday I will only post one  today so my readers do not miss any of my sterling observations.

A growing problem in this country is that of the state known as poverty….of course these days someone is going to blame inflation as the culprit…..but sadly the problem is much older than that.

I have been writing about this situation for decades……some of my thoughts are posted here…..

The Republican Party is running a huge scam right now, similar to the one they ran in 1992 when President George HW Bush was setting up phony cocaine busts across the street from the White House and running his infamous Willie Horton ad.

Here’s the essential formula:

• Increase levels of inequality in the country to the point where poverty and homelessness are a crisis.
• Do this with huge, trillion-dollar tax cuts for rich people so they get massively richer, while gutting social-safety-net programs and supports for working class people like unions.
• Poverty and homelessness increase which produces an increase in crime, and that freaks out middle-class people — the majority of voters.
• Then build your political identity and campaign around being “tough on crime” while completely ignoring the fact that the poverty you helped create is largely responsible for much of that crime.
• Blame the poverty-driven crime, instead, on “welfare” programs Democrats have put into place to try to soften the blow of the poverty caused by Republican policies.

This is not a new idea. Around 170 A.D. Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius said, “Poverty is the mother of crime,” although he was actually trying to reduce both in the wake of others who’d made poverty and thus crime worse.

And then there’s inequality, which it turns out is at least as consequential as poverty as a driver of criminal behavior.

Years of research done by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett of the Equality Trust in the UK found that as inequality goes up, so does crime particularly violent crime.

https://www.opednews.com/articles/2/The-Ugly-Truth-Republican-by-Thom-Hartmann-Crime_Crime-Rates_Homelessness_Inequality-210527-448.html

There is an easy fix to this problem….it may not eliminate all the inequalities but it will lessen the problem somewhat….

Here is a novel idea…..wage war on poverty not the poor!

https://rcooley123.wordpress.com/2013/11/03/try-waging-war-on-poverty-instead-of-the-poor/

The demonization of the poor continues today….these unfortunate Americans are blamed for everything from low tax revenues to crumbling infrastructure….not a word about the tax cuts that also cut revenue for the nation….if blame needs to be assigned then look NO further than the GOP.

Again…wage war on poverty not the poor.

Educate….Organize….Act

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“lego ergo scribo”