Chardo entire post is blather - it attacks a straw man - there is no one suggesting those who need help should not get it - it takes the mindless campaign rhetoric of the Democratic Party to attack a position nobody holds.

Like would be social scientist, this blather ignores the reality - we have an entire industry of social workers building an entire career out of creating more and more government dependents. It takes a willful suspension of anyone's power of empirical observation to not recongize the growth of the disability rolls as a sign of abuse.

Dave, I don’t think that you believe your own drivel. You can’t possibly not know that there is a widespread attitude that the poor, anyone who collects from the government is in that position through some fault of their own. It’s campaign rhetoric alright, Republican campaign rhetoric. Have you ever really listened to Paul Ryan channeling the ghost of Ayn Rand? You say that no one is saying that the poor would be denied but in the next breath launch into a diatribe about abuses and people who don’t pay taxes. And you said “we have an entire industry of social workers building an entire career out of creating more and more government dependents” That is beyond the pale! How do social workers create dependency? I was a social worker for 31 years and that my friend is an insult to say the least. I worked with the poor, the disabled and abused and neglected children. If I thought that I created dependency I would just k**l myself now because my whole career would have been meaningless. If you believe one word of this claptrap you must have your head where the sun don’t shine
I know of more than one case of people claiming injury on the job, settling for a one time payment for total disability, then using that declared disability to go on Soc Sec disability - all supported by a entire legal sub system of lawyers and administrators who gain both income and job security by the growth of this s**m.

Look at the cell phone s**m for yet another example - people getting multiple phones for free, and companies also benefitting by it.

Meanwhile the simple reality that for those that do not pay income tax, there is no rate too high - nor benefit too generous.

The meme about the working poor paying payroll taxes is another misleading gambit - they payroll taxes they pay go towards the entitlements they gain, with the entitlements not sustainable from the payroll taxes they pay - in other words, those entitlements are supported by other taxes on other people.

As to the workig poor not able to earn enough, look at the cost placed on producers in the form of taxes and regulations and support of social engineering programs - limiting the amount of revenues available to be shared with American based workers - just one of the many variables causing so much offshoring.

There was a time when most folks could earn a good living in America - a time when there was a lot less government - particualarly federal government - I suspect those two are related.

Widespread attitude is not the same as the campiagn position of the Republican Party - anymore than the widespread belief that Bush knew and/or authorized 9/11 is the official campaign position of the Democratic Party -

I've listened to Paul Ryan far more than you, and I've seen the propaganda about him pushing old ladies off the cliff, but you are the first one I've encountered who seems to believe that - which would make you as bad on the left than those you describe from the far right.

I've gone further than you in dealing with the poor - I was raised on welfare and in public housing - and I've had the experience of getting out of that situation - as well as taking my Mom and 3 younger sisters out of that - when I was 18 and got my first job - at minimum wage.

If you really were a social worker for 31 years and you do not understand how many programs are enablers to those who, but for some personal effort, can take care of themselves you wore blinders for 31 years. There is no doubt that there is a legit need for help for many people, but to believe that all of those folks who have spend generatiion after generation dependent on the government are truly in need of the government, you'd need to believe they are genetically damaged.
Meanwhile, if you otherwise don't know what's going on in the world, do yourself a favor - check out Binder & Binder - a national law firm making tens to hundreds of millions - see what they're doing.

I'm sorry if reality presented to you is an insult, but perhaps if you had the advantage of some of those years in private industry, learning how value is generated in an open market, you'd be less sensitive.

By the way, I don't know who WND is, and I do not watch FOX, and throwing FOX into the conersation is another mindless effort at appearing intelligent - like so many of the left with the attacks on FOX, I doubt seriously if you have any personal knowledge (only what Huffington told you in all probability) about what they air but that wouldn't stop strong opinion - I have no opinion about them because I have no knowledge -

But that will never happen because one of the hallmarks of progressive libs like you is the ability to look facts straight in the face and deny them.

Not that I want you to die, I don't. I am completely convinced that you think you are a good, caring person. You are simply misguided.

You don't know what I've done and I really don't care to share. I will just say that life has not always been easy....I'm not living in the clouds

One of the differences I see between a person like Dave and yourself is this: Dave worked himself and his family out of poverty. Having done that he says that if he could do it, others can too. Not necessarily all others, but he isn't the only one.

If there is a progressive liberal anywhere who has done what Dave did, they would state that they were able to do it only because they are so much superior to the rest of humanity and nobody else should be expected to be as awesome as they are.

I'll close on one additional point - public housing. Believe it or not, it was not all that bad - it was akin to what today is called a garden apartment (which was what my wife and I first lived in when married in '71). One of the reasons it was bad it that there was some high standards expected - tenants were held to similar responsibilities on care and maintainence that one might find in private housing - and if tenants did not take care, they were evicted. How different a world then - and in many ways, how much better.

Wh**ever else is going on, the system is not working - the institutionalizing of dependency grows as the overall standard of living grows. Welfare when I grew up was far more penurious than it is today - and that alone may have sparked a desire to change things. I do not profess, however, to have all the answers but clearly what we do today is not working for those in most need for improvement - and I can't help believing it is tied into something that struck me in the late '60's (it was '62 when we last were on welare and in public housing) - the term welfare rates became popular and it stunned me. I had never considered welfare to be a right and wonder how much the mindset that it is a right by those on it that perpetuates it.

Your comment about workers and capitalists shows a lack of real knowledge of how it works - we've had capitalism for a lot longer than we've had welfare - and people learned to be independent when doing so was far more difficult than today.

I've managed in manufacturing for a lot of years, and I've see people cast off more because of the difficulties governments create than any other reason.

If an employee can generate value, no capitalist would cast them off. What you have today, in far too many cases, is society creating uneducated and unsk**led young people with expectations well beyond any value they bring. You mention Newark, what is the graduation rate of high schoolers there? For those who do manage to graduate, what is your honest evaluation of their literacy. If they have no,or marginal, education - how is a capitalist to employ them when his job is to bring value to consumers - people who choose to provide the capitalist money in exchange for value generated.

How many times have I heard we need to allow the immigrants to come here freely because they will do the work that Americans won't? Can you walk through Newark or Camden or Philadelphia or so many other cities and really believe that we have a shortage of unsk**led uneducated people.