As we gather to enjoy Thanksgiving

Let's remember one of the popular myths from our history--The Great Depression. Myth #4, Where the market had failed, the government stepped in to protect ordinary people.

"Hoover's disastrous agricultural policies involved the know-it-all Hoover acting as his own agriculture secretary and in fact writing the original Agricultural Marketing Act that evolved into Smoot-Hawley. While exports accounted for 7% of U.S. GDP in 1929, trade accounted for about one-third of U.S. farm income. The loss of export markets caused by Smoot-Hawley devastated the agricultural sector. Following in Hoover's footsteps, FDR concentrated on trying to raise farm income by such tactics as setting quotas on production and paying farmers to remove acreage from production -- even though this meant higher prices for hard-pressed consumers and had the effect of both lowering productivity and driving farmers off their land."

It was the poor who were hurt the most by the government's policies during the depression. We did not get out of it through benign, enlightened federal programs, taxing the people with one hand, and handing a little back with the other. Don't be fooled again!

Yes, do contribute to your local food pantry--there really are hungry people, and in keeping with a long tradition in the USA, conservative Christians will be contributing the lion's share. But keep in mind how poverty figures are juggled by bureaucrats so that it is never eleminated (they would lose their jobs). These figures do not take into consideration the huge transfer of wealth in the form of health care (Medicaid, Medicare, SCHIP), food programs (food stamps, school nutriton, etc.), housing programs (vouchers, affordable housing trusts, etc), Social Security and tax right offs, so that the 95% of us who were to get a tax break under Obama can't, because so many people don't pay federal income tax. Also, about 50 million of our 300 million people aren't citizens and probably need to go home and live on the kindness of their own governments. That would considerably reduce our expenses. If women would marry the father of their children, that could also reduce some government spending. The proportion of children living in female-headed households doubled between 1970 and 2003, rising from 11.6 percent in 1970 to 23.6 in 2003. There are a lot of women living with men who should be kicked out of the house simply for not contributing to expenses! Also, poverty figures include people who are only in that group briefly, such as college students or people just starting out, or the elderly who have wealth, but not income.

Indeed, there will always be a gap between the rich and poor, even if the bottom makes $200,000 a year and the top $200,000,000; and it is the gap and not the actual income or benefits that determines the philosophy of the party about to take over the $400 billion or 12% of our GDP we're currently spending on low-income and poor people.