Pooring Their Hearts Out

It's not easy for an agency as boring as the Census Bureau to make news...unless they happen to say exactly what the Obama Administration and mainstream media would like them to. And so it is that we're now seeing news stories screaming "HALF OF ALL AMERICANS ARE POOR" at the same time those damn millionaire-loving Republicans are refusing to raise taxes on the rich.

But if you read past the headlines and into the fine print and weasel-wording (which too many people won't do), the narrative that half of America is eating Purina Dog Chow and living in cardboard boxes quickly unravels.

To begin with, statistics released as recently as September put the number of poor-ish people in the United States at 1-in-3. But even that highly-questionable number lacked the journalistic panache which the Left needed for their narrative... so the Census Bureau conveniently came up with a new way of measuring poverty which would include a lot more people than ever before, even though their economic status hadn't changed.

In order to cook the books, the Census Bureau added new indices to their poverty measurement methodology. They now include the cost of medical coverage (which has gone up under Obamacare) and the cost of transportation (which has gone up under Obama's "War on Fuel") and other living expenses (which have gone up under Obama's "War on Employment").

Additionally, the news articles are lumping together as "poor" both those who meet the rather generous government definition of poverty ($26,675 for a family of five)...and those people with "low incomes" which are twice the poverty level ($53,350 for that same wretched family).

But assets aren't included in the measurements, so people are still considered poor even if they're living in paid-for homes, driving nice cars, and have plenty of money in the bank.

Are many people really hurting now? Of course they are - and Obama and the Democrats are eagerly making everything worse to increase dependency on government programs.

But that's not the story that Americans are supposed to be hearing right now. We're supposed to believe that half of our country is starving owing to the oppression of the "Evil Rich" and that only Barack Obama, the self-proclaimed "warrior for the middle class," has the power to swing his vorpal sword and put things right.

A story so ridiculous that it proves the mainstream media has completely taken leave of its census.

Another surprising finding: bankers love the sound of orphans crying.
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