Glenn Beck: Democrats are making us poor! Wahh!

[General Zod]

Shocking, I know

NEW YORK (CNN) -- "I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty but leading them or driving them out of it."

What hate-mongering politician would be so politically incorrect as to suggest that things like higher minimum wages and more government handouts don't actually help the poor? I'll identify the culprit at the end of this column, but for now, I'm more interested in figuring out why that statement sounds so controversial.

Poverty is one of the few national issues that, at least on the surface, unites us all. It's not a political condition; it's a human one. After all, when's the last time you've heard a politician campaign on a pro-poverty platform?

But although the problem may unite us, the solutions don't. And perhaps nothing illustrates that better than what's been happening in Detroit, Michigan, and Buffalo, New York.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly a third of the residents in those cities are living beneath the poverty line, the highest rates among large cities in the entire country.

No matter what side of the political aisle you're on, that is nothing short of appalling. Yet if you ask people what we should do about it, you'll probably hear answers that inexplicably break down right along party lines.

Is there a perfect answer? Probably not. But what bothers me is that people stubbornly stick to their solution, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that it's not working.

For example, Detroit, whose mayor has been indicted on felony charges, hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1961. Buffalo has been even more stubborn. It started putting a Democrat in office back in 1954, and it hasn't stopped since.

Unfortunately, those two cities may be alone at the top of the poverty rate list, but they're not alone in their love for Democrats. Cincinnati, Ohio (third on the poverty rate list), hasn't had a Republican mayor since 1984. Cleveland, Ohio (fourth on the list), has been led by a Democrat since 1989. St. Louis, Missouri (sixth), hasn't had a Republican since 1949, Milwaukee, Wisconsin (eighth), since 1908, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (ninth), since 1952 and Newark, New Jersey (10th), since 1907.

The only two cities in the top 10 that I didn't mention (Miami, Florida, and El Paso, Texas) haven't had Republicans in office either -- just Democrats, independents or nonpartisans.

Over the past 50 years, the eight cities listed above have had Republican leadership for a combined 36 years. The rest of the time -- a combined 364 years -- they've been led by Democrats.

Five of the 10 cities with the highest poverty rates (Detroit, Buffalo, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Newark) have had a Democratic stranglehold since at least 1961: more than 45 years. Two of the cities (Milwaukee and Newark) have been electing Democrats since the first Model T rolled off the assembly line in 1908.

Two cities, 100 years, all Democrats.

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, the asylums in those cities must be as full as the soup kitchens.

Not too long ago, I had the great honor of being invited to a charity dinner hosted by Chris Gardner. He's the guy whose rags-to-riches life was portrayed by Will Smith in the movie "Pursuit of Happyness." Chris had been on my show a few times, and I've always admired his story and his message of hope through personal responsibility.

As I prepared for the dinner and looked into Chris' charity, I started to get nervous. The roster was filled with liberals, most of whom would probably hate me. Hillary Clinton, Mario Cuomo, Alan Alda, Kenneth Cole and Charles Grodin were just a few of the people I was worried about running into.

But the question I kept asking myself was, why? Why can't people from wildly different political stripes come together in support of a common cause without feeling alienated? Why is an issue like poverty "owned" by one political party?

I consider myself a conservative, but I consider myself an American and a human being first. When people whom I normally agree with screw things up, I call them on it. Yet the people in these cities apparently don't. Newark keeps drinking the Kool-Aid, electing the same people with the same ideas, slipping down the poverty list (along with the "Places Never to Visit Unless it's the Airport" list) and wondering why.

We've talked a lot about "change" in this country recently, but there's a much more important catchphrase that we've neglected: "All politics is local." Maybe instead of focusing so much on who we put in charge of our country, we should focus more on who we put in charge of our cities.

Oh, and before I forget. The hateful politician who suggested that we should be "driving" or "leading" the poor out of poverty? It was Benjamin Franklin.

Good thing he never tried to run for mayor of Newark

It's kind of neat how he completely ignored the fiscal irresponsibility of our current Commander-in-Chimp, or how the economy under Bill Clinton (one of those evil democrats) was actually doing much better than it is now. But hey, why let inconvenient facts get in the way?

[Azazal]

Speaking on Detroit, guess the fact that the auto market has tanked has nothing to do with it, it's all them evil liberals fault

As for the current mayor, who I feel is pretty damn corrupt - Yes it's wiki, but it gives a good run down, it's best to call him a Democrat in name only. Dennis Archer, mayor from 94 to 02, also a Dem, did quite a bit of good for the city, sadly he had to fight the old Coleman Young political machine so much it burnt him out.

[Darth Wong]

So how many Democrat mayors in the country's most prosperous cities?

[Bounty]

So how many Democrat mayors in the country's most prosperous cities?

Of the five richest US cities, only one - NYC - currently has a Republican mayor; all the others are run by Democrats.

[Pelranius]

So how many Democrat mayors in the country's most prosperous cities?

Of the five richest US cities, only one - NYC - currently has a Republican mayor; all the others are run by Democrats.

Bloomberg is an independent now.

Well, whining about the Democrats has made Mr. Beck pretty well off.

[Bounty]

So how many Democrat mayors in the country's most prosperous cities?

Of the five richest US cities, only one - NYC - currently has a Republican mayor; all the others are run by Democrats.

Bloomberg is an independent now.

The GDP data I found is from 2005, and he was still a Republican then.

It's a special kind of irony when someone invents a criterion hoping to score points... and even that made-up criterion comes out in favour of the other guy.

[Darth Wong]

Of the five richest US cities, only one - NYC - currently has a Republican mayor; all the others are run by Democrats.

Bloomberg is an independent now.

The GDP data I found is from 2005, and he was still a Republican then.

It's a special kind of irony when someone invents a criterion hoping to score points... and even that made-up criterion comes out in favour of the other guy.

Yeah, but right-wing liars like him know that the average person doesn't think of asking how the control group compares. It's a lot like the anti-pornography argument that most criminals watch porn; the people who sell that argument and fall for it are not the types to ask what percentage of non-criminal men also watch porn.

[Broomstick]

So how many Democrat mayors in the country's most prosperous cities?

Well, there's the Daley Dynasty in Chicago - a city that, while not perfect, functions pretty well and is prosperous enough to be campaigning to hold an Olympics (it's in the final three candidates for 2016 or something) I can't ever recall hearing of anything other than a Democrat running the place, and certainly Daley the Younger has held sway for the past 5 election cycles.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Being preached to by this former drunk who had the random luck and poor judgment of others to thank for a career in showbiz-media running his mouth is odious. Fuck him.

[SirNitram]

Spending-to-taxation spread. Link

Many will note the biggest payers tend towards being solid strongholds of blue, and the reds tend to be getting more than they pay out. In other words, the Democrats are making the whining GOP richer in services and infrastructure and benefits.

[Medic]

Good fucking god, does he actually draw any sort of cause-effect relationship whatsoever in that screed or does he just pontificate on the 'poverty concurrent with liburulz!' in the face? This sounds a lot like "gays are destroying America / the American family" -- in short, how? And it isn't Gay Banditos either. (ref. Lewis Black)

SirNitram
In other words, some San Franciscan hippy helped pay for an interstate in Alabama? Heh.

[Winston Blake]

Not too long ago, I had the great honor of being invited to a charity dinner hosted by Chris Gardner. He's the guy whose rags-to-riches life was portrayed by Will Smith in the movie "Pursuit of Happyness." Chris had been on my show a few times, and I've always admired his story and his message of hope through personal responsibility.

I know he doesn't say it explicitly, but I feel there's a confusion between 'can happen' and 'is likely to happen'. If you can only find a handful of rags-to-riches examples, then its disingenuous to suggest that poor people could become rich if they were just more 'responsible'. Instead of 'if he could do it, you can do it too', what it really shows is that the odds of it happening are so low that there's only a handful of success stories in a vast sea of misery.

[The Spartan]

This reminds me of some of the bullshit I overhear at work. Like two people crowing about how stupid it is to vote for Obama because of something Charles Barkley said. Something to the effect of, "Poor people have been voting for Democrats for 50 years and they're still poor."

Never mind that it's poor blacks that have been doing that not poor whites. Never mind that the Republicans have shown that they'll do nothing real to help the poor and will actively hinder them. Try and correct them? "Oh, you don't know what you're talking about." And then they go right back to crowing about what he said. I don't even bother anymore.

[Scottish Ninja]

Not too long ago, I had the great honor of being invited to a charity dinner hosted by Chris Gardner. He's the guy whose rags-to-riches life was portrayed by Will Smith in the movie "Pursuit of Happyness." Chris had been on my show a few times, and I've always admired his story and his message of hope through personal responsibility.

I know he doesn't say it explicitly, but I feel there's a confusion between 'can happen' and 'is likely to happen'. If you can only find a handful of rags-to-riches examples, then its disingenuous to suggest that poor people could become rich if they were just more 'responsible'. Instead of 'if he could do it, you can do it too', what it really shows is that the odds of it happening are so low that there's only a handful of success stories in a vast sea of misery.

It's funny that people don't seem to get that if such stories were actually common, there wouldn't be any movies about them. Even to the point of uncommon - no one makes movies about people who win the lottery either, unless they're comedies.

Unfortunately in the US, the idea that the poor have the opportunity to get rich if they just work hard is far too ingrained into the national culture, and distracts people from the real issues of poverty while right-wing hackjobs bleat, "Poor people are poor because they're too lazy to help themselves!"

[Darth Wong]

This reminds me of some of the bullshit I overhear at work. Like two people crowing about how stupid it is to vote for Obama because of something Charles Barkley said. Something to the effect of, "Poor people have been voting for Democrats for 50 years and they're still poor."

Never mind that it's poor blacks that have been doing that not poor whites. Never mind that the Republicans have shown that they'll do nothing real to help the poor and will actively hinder them. Try and correct them? "Oh, you don't know what you're talking about." And then they go right back to crowing about what he said. I don't even bother anymore.

There will always be poor; the idea that any government can eliminate the poor is completely stupid. However, in some countries the poor are treated better than others. Canada, for example, treats the poor much better than America does. The word is "humane": a word that does not appear to occur in the Republican dictionary.

[TC Pilot]

Actually, I've heard rumor from my friend who works in the auto industry (well, Hendrickson) that jobs are actually starting to come back to places like Detroit because the decreased value of the dollar and such.

So you see, it's all part of Bush's grand scheme to help the poor and unemployed.

[Broomstick]

This reminds me of some of the bullshit I overhear at work. Like two people crowing about how stupid it is to vote for Obama because of something Charles Barkley said. Something to the effect of, "Poor people have been voting for Democrats for 50 years and they're still poor."

Never mind that it's poor blacks that have been doing that not poor whites. Never mind that the Republicans have shown that they'll do nothing real to help the poor and will actively hinder them. Try and correct them? "Oh, you don't know what you're talking about." And then they go right back to crowing about what he said. I don't even bother anymore.

There will always be poor; the idea that any government can eliminate the poor is completely stupid. However, in some countries the poor are treated better than others. Canada, for example, treats the poor much better than America does. The word is "humane": a word that does not appear to occur in the Republican dictionary.

There are two kinds of poor:

1) People who are temporarily poor - college students devoting most funds to education, people who suffer a diaster like Katrina or whose home is destroyed by fire or the like, job loss, severe accident/illness, etc. Such people, given a reasonable amount of assistance and opportunity, will climb out of poverty. A normal adult may go through one or two periods of such financial trouble, but won't stay there most of his/her life.

2) Chronically poor - these people may be mentally ill, severely disabled, mentally slow, whatever. These folks are not capable of climbing out of poverty, but should be treated humanely (as Wong points out). They aren't lazy, they're incapable.

There's a major problem when the system is rigged so anyone becoming temporarily poor finds it's near impossible to climb back up again, thereby becoming chronically poor because opportunity is closed off. Such a system benefits no one, yet we seem to be headed that way in the US.

Here's the really stupid part - the middle class, including the upper half of it, SHOULD be in favor of a strong social safety net because anyone can be affected by fire, flood, accident, illness, etc. However, over the past few decades, it has been so beat into everyone that one must be self reliant and if you can't take care of your shit no matter what happens you are by definition irresponsible and/or a slacker that it has led the middle class to support dismantling their safety net. We've turned back the social clock to 1920 or so. The conservatives wanted to un-do the New Deal, and to a large extent they have (except the portions that serve them).

When the Great Depression Mark II comes the former middle class will suddenly realize they cut holes in their own life raft... but then it will be too late.

[Illuminatus Primus]

You know, a lot of his feel-good throwaway truisms wouldn't be so odious and condescending if it wasn't package with an obvious and crudely partisan direct appeal to vote Republican in local elections.

[Patrick Degan]

The Republikan attitude to the poor is thus: throwing a man off a ship with anvils chained to his ankles, then excoriating him for not having the gumption to swim his own way back to the surface and catch up with the ship again.

[apocolypse]

So how many Democrat mayors in the country's most prosperous cities?

Of the five richest US cities, only one - NYC - currently has a Republican mayor; all the others are run by Democrats.

L.A. is currently Democrat, but was until recently Republican. However, Hahn was more Schwartzenegger style Republican.

[Adrian Laguna]

Here's the really stupid part - the middle class, including the upper half of it, SHOULD be in favor of a strong social safety net because anyone can be affected by fire, flood, accident, illness, etc. However, over the past few decades, it has been so beat into everyone that one must be self reliant and if you can't take care of your shit no matter what happens you are by definition irresponsible and/or a slacker that it has led the middle class to support dismantling their safety net. We've turned back the social clock to 1920 or so. The conservatives wanted to un-do the New Deal, and to a large extent they have (except the portions that serve them).

I think some of the blame must fall upon the Democratic Party and other "liberals" in the United States. Yes the Republicans have been utter dicks to everyone not rich in trying to bring back the Gilded Age (a sarcastic title, btw), but the same way we can blame the police for having an ineffective response to crime, I think we must blame our politicians for being a bunch of useless spineless cowards, and consistently failing to protect the people. They don't put out good arguments, their political campaigns are bumbling messes, they let themselves be bullied by the opposition, and they have no solid principles to use as a platform. The main reason they have experienced a resurgence in resent years is because the Republicans have made that much of a royal mess of things.

As a general aside, most conservatives in this country hardly deserve the title. They don't want to conserve shit, they want to turn back the clock almost a century, that's more properly called a reactionary. They are basically radicals in their own right, but hiding behind masks of reasonableness and "real American values".

[General Zod]

I think some of the blame must fall upon the Democratic Party and other "liberals" in the United States. Yes the Republicans have been utter dicks to everyone not rich in trying to bring back the Gilded Age (a sarcastic title, btw), but the same way we can blame the police for having an ineffective response to crime, I think we must blame our politicians for being a bunch of useless spineless cowards, and consistently failing to protect the people. They don't put out good arguments, their political campaigns are bumbling messes, they let themselves be bullied by the opposition, and they have no solid principles to use as a platform. The main reason they have experienced a resurgence in resent years is because the Republicans have made that much of a royal mess of things.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make since nobody is placing the blame squarely on one side, that I can see. Except of course the douchebag in the article. The point is that Republicans are the ones arguably causing more harm than the Democrats.

As a general aside, most conservatives in this country hardly deserve the title. They don't want to conserve shit, they want to turn back the clock almost a century, that's more properly called a reactionary. They are basically radicals in their own right, but hiding
behind masks of reasonableness and "real American values".

I'm sure no true Scotsman eats British food either.

[Bounty]

So how many Democrat mayors in the country's most prosperous cities?

Of the five richest US cities, only one - NYC - currently has a Republican mayor; all the others are run by Democrats.

L.A. is currently Democrat, but was until recently Republican. However, Hahn was more Schwartzenegger style Republican.

James Hahn is a Republican ? Then why did CBS call him a "mild-mannered Democrat" in 2001? And why does the DNC list him as (D) in 2004?

[Straha]

So how many Democrat mayors in the country's most prosperous cities?

Of the five richest US cities, only one - NYC - currently has a Republican mayor; all the others are run by Democrats.

Piff. New York has had almost 16 years of 'Republican' rule if you count Giuliani and Bloomberg. But Giuliani was so left wing on pretty much everything but crime that to count him as a republican would be as fair as counting Joe Lieberman as a democrat. And Bloomberg was a lifelong democrat who changed his party membership last minute so he could qualify for the Republican primary which he had a much better shot of winning. They've both been broadly moderate on most issues, and then partly polarized one way or the other. Giuliani, like I said, was a very very tough advocate against crime and also cut public spending to homeless shelters and shut down strip clubs across much of the city. At the same time he was behind the push that legalized domestic partnerships between same-sex couples in the city, he also increased healthcare spending, embraced illegal immigration, supported gun control by suing gun manufacturers and dressed up in drag in public a couple of times. The only really draconian thing that Giuliani ever did was ban ferrets from the city altogether and scream his head off at anyone who disagreed. Even when he was a guest on a radio show. Man was a ferret Nazi.

Bloomberg is a similar story. He took strong control of the public school system in New York City and imposed accountability and restraint on the school system, with decent results. He's also been harsh on crime (not nearly as harsh as Giuliani was, but he doesn't need to be), imposed business style accountability in City Hall and has imposed fiscal restraint on the budget (for instance, IIRC New York City had a Billion Dollar budget surplus, Bloomberg set it aside mainly to help pay for future pension obligations that the city didn't have to budget for under its accounting rules. Over the objections of the city council which wanted that money spent.) But he's also instituted a number of poverty fighting measures which include giving debit accounts to poor mothers who take their children to school and to the doctor and redefining the poverty line in New York City as much higher than it is in the rest of the country. He's also banned smoking and transfats in all restaurants in the city, done all he can to ban guns in the city and been incredibly eco-friendly amongst a whole slew of other things.

So yes, I don't think there're any cities in America which have been run by a "true" conservative in the past couple decades.

As for the article itself, I find it amusing that all he does is in essence say "personal responsibility is nice" over and over again. Nobody is going to disagree with him there, but it's not the main problem and it doesn't address any of the core issues of poverty besides implying that poor people might be to blame for their own situation without coming out and saying it. Nor does he come up with any actual alternative to fighting poverty, he just says it's bad and that other people have mismanaged the job. In short Beck is an idiot. It's a real shame too, back when he was starting out on radio he was one of the funniest people I ever heard, and it was always a pleasure to listen to him (he was also more moderate.) Now that he's a 'pundit' he has to be serious, but everything he writes reads like comedy with all the humour sucked out which only makes him seem like an utter pillock at best.

[Straha]

Of the five richest US cities, only one - NYC - currently has a Republican mayor; all the others are run by Democrats.

L.A. is currently Democrat, but was until recently Republican. However, Hahn was more Schwartzenegger style Republican.

James Hahn is a Republican ? Then why did CBS call him a "mild-mannered Democrat" in 2001? And why does the DNC list him as (D) in 2004?

He mistook Hahn for Richard Riordan, who was a democrat and mayor of LA for eight years before Hahn took over.