Enjoy....
Tim Burnett I've got a family connection to this quote! Helder Camara was the Bishop of Recife Brasil, my mom's hometown. Known as the "Red Bishop" He was hugely influential in helping the poor and was frequently at odds with the military coup that came to power in Brasil in the 1960s. If you ever visit Recife and see the shantytowns and roaming gangs of homeless street kids, you can understand how he came to make this statement. Oh, and I actually met him at the Miami airport one time.Tuesday at 6:17pm · · 1 person
Mac Fuentes Once again, the wrong action is taken and the wrong question asked. If you want to do something for that poor person, give them a job. Oh wait, you need an evil rich person for that. Besides, that poor person is too lazy to work, they get food for free so why bother.Tuesday at 7:19pm ·- Tim Burnett Mac, these quotes were made about the WORKING poor and feeding programs that were directed largely at malnourished children. Additionally Brasil, to my knowledge, didn't have anything resembling a welfare state at the time.Tuesday at 7:37pm ·
Allen Elliotte For additional context the picture was taken in a Depression era refugee camp. The people pictured were the families of dispossessed farmers - good, solid, tax paying citizens.Tuesday at 8:24pm ·- Allen Elliotte In any case the Ayn Rand style dismissal of social problems is getting old and tiresome. She was a 3rd rate intellectual, 4th rate writer, a drug addict, and welfare cheat.Tuesday at 8:44pm ·
- Mac Fuentes The majority of Dom Holder's adult life was spent with a dictatorship in Brazil and political in-fighting and struggle until 1994. We are creating the same environment here today as we move toward more government programs, regulation, dependency for food and housing and taxation. The liberal base in this country needs to realize that government is not the answer for our economy. The conservative based in this country needs to realize that government is not the answer to morality. We have a vast divide in those who pay attention, it will be the end of this nation as we know it if we don't wake up. I'm just sayin'Tuesday at 8:48pm ·
- Mac Fuentes Typical liberal, call freedom and self reliance old and tiresome, then some name calling to put any argument to rest. I wonder if you've every worked a hard day in your life and were actually proud of what you had done. If you had, you might wonder how someone can stand to take welfare and food stamps day in and day out and feel any self worth. Again, if you want to help someone, make them, force them if you have to, to help themselves.Tuesday at 8:57pm · · 2 people
- Allen Elliotte Mac, I was going to respond about how I work 50+ hours a week, have owned and worked a farm, run a business, and probably paid 4x the taxes you have - but I'm too busy eating pot brownies and learning the words to La Marseillaise.Tuesday at 9:16pm · · 5 people
John Mcgowan I"m not going to get involved in the modern feudal state we call capitalism.Tuesday at 10:17pm ·
Mike Meyer I just prefer to be free to decide what to responsibly allot my goods and talents. What I do,or don't do I will ultimately answer to a higher power for.Tuesday at 10:36pm · · 1 person
Mark Romer Having never heard this quote before, and knowing nothing of the context, I can't shake the feeling that something is missing, or lost in translation. To ask the question of why the poor lack food is hardly communist or capitalist, liberal or conservative. If he was accused of being a communist, I can't imagine it was for asking such a question. This quote just doesn't make sense.Tuesday at 10:47pm · · 1 person- Mac Fuentes Mark - I believe in the climate of 1940's Brazil, the question "why do the poor have no food" was equal to "spread the wealth" or from each by ability - to each by need.Yesterday at 8:03am ·
- Mac Fuentes Allen, question... so you've worked hard, been successful and paid lots of taxes, have you paid your fair share?Yesterday at 8:05am ·
Greg St John Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.Yesterday at 9:29am · · 1 person- Greg St John I fight against Autism. If I give time and money to heal the sick what does that make me? If someone comes to me and takes my money to feed the poor and does not allow me to heal the sick, what does that make him? Why should someone else get to decide what is important? Are you a better person if you do everything you can do for a cause or if you force someone else to do it for you? I think your quote is a poor representation of society and noone would think him a communist for asking. We would think he is a communist if he tried to force everyone to fix it because he thought it was more important than anything else. Why does he get to choose is my question.Yesterday at 9:39am · · 1 person
- Tim Burnett Again, there was no welfare state in Brasil at the time, and he wasn't really calling for one. He was addressing the plight of the working poor who lived in substandard shanty tows and frequently suffered from malnutrition. An American analogue would be the depiction of the migrants in "The Grapes of Wrath". The charges of communist came both from him challenging the economic status quo and his human rights activism which brought him in conflict with the military junta which was ruling Brasil at the time.Yesterday at 9:56am ·
- Greg St John But this is being put out and discussedas if it is here and current as a "liberal" viewpoint. Therefore my comment that this does not fit our society and what we are going through now and here.Yesterday at 10:01am ·
- Mac Fuentes If this is not to be taken as a statement on the current liberal political agenda in the US, then it's a waste of time and plain stupid. It applies today to all the social entitlements the left is pushing, healthcare, food stamps, welfare. The poor have no food because they're poor! They're poor cause they keep doing things that make them poor. The Feds trying to fix that is just making it worse! You want jobs? trash the current tax system and implement The Fair Tax!!Yesterday at 10:12am ·
Trish Foerster MacCabe Sheila Collins Ferguson - Wow! What a can of worms you (we?) opened! Dare I say... I may be simplistic but in my opinion it'a all about moderation. I can understand the argument against socailism, however it seems at this point the pendulum has swung so far the other way that the poor have little to no opportunity to pull themselves up, even if they wanted to. Healthcare is unattainable as the insurance companies control most everything having to do with healthcare. Lower education is suffering because certain groups don't value it. Why should they? They can afford to put their kids in private schools! Public higher education is becoming unaffordable and based on what I have heard from friends working at unversities the quality is decreasing as funds are also being diverted elsewhere. Housing in falling quickly from reach. And yet the rich keep getting richer. It's all well and good that the rich provide jobs but (a) did they really do it all on their own? Who built the roads used to transport goods? Who paid to educate the workers? Who keeps the peace against rioting and violence, which makes factories safer? Who fights fires to keep people (and factories) safe? Etc. See a pattern? (Thank you Elizabeth Warren!) And (b) How much is too much? How do the uber rich justify having multiple mega mansions, private jets and gold plated god know what when there are people dying because they can't afford housing or healthcare? Did you hear about the man who died last month from a detal related infection because he didn't have healthcare? Senseless!Yesterday at 11:18am ·- Mac Fuentes Absolute rubish Trish. You can't think past the wealth envy to see how many people were uplifted by those who can and do provide jobs. The Elizabeth Warren mentality is the basis of sciailism / communism, "you used a public road so we all get a piece of the pie". If that ever becomes the law of the land, we're doomed.Yesterday at 11:27am · · 1 person
- Mac Fuentes And by the way, no one has ever died because they didn't have healthcare, i.e. health insurance. Died because they didn't get care, couldn't afford care, yes. For that we could use some tort reform but you can thank the democrat party for that never happening.Yesterday at 11:54am · · 1 person
- Mark Romer @Trish, Those of us sending our kids to private schools are still paying taxes that fund the public schools, while at the same time reducing the number of kids that have to be served by them, so don't blame us for any decline in public school quality. Nor are we all "rich"--I bust my tail working two jobs to put my kids in Catholic schools. My family could have a much higher standard of living if I trusted the government to educate the kids, but I don't, precisely because I value my kids' education more than those luxuries I could otherwise afford.
Housing prices are coming down now, now that we're on the other side of a crisis created at its root by government pressuring the market to introduce more consumption through less-stringent lending practices. If Congress had stayed out of it, housing would be more affordable today.
Where opportunities for the poor are being blocked, look for government-induced problems. Bad schools? Get rid of the government's near-monopoly in lower education and switch to a voucher-based system so the schools have to compete. Health insurance costs skyrocketing? Stop mandating what health plans have to cover, give the individual the same tax break for insurance that businesses get and remove the barriers to selling health insurance across state lines. No employment opportunities for the low-skilled? Abolish the minimum wage so they can offer their labor cheap while they train on the job, and reduce the regulatory burden on the business that could hire them. All these suggestions are necessarily too simple. It would take a LOT more space to detail all the things that should be done.
No, nobody got rich "on their own", but those rich that Elizabeth Warren made her boneheaded rant about do participate in the building of roads, the education of their workers, the support of the police, etc.; and they by-and-large participate in it more than most; AND they pay other people, who also participate in those things. Yet, of all the people involved, it was the factory owner she derides who was THE key person in building that business and creating those jobs. Without the entrepreneur having the drive to build the business in the first place, where would the workers go for jobs?
How much is too much? Wrong question. Do you think "the rich" are like dragons that hoard wealth and lie down on top of it so that it does no one any good? They pay taxes when they make money (moreso than the rest of us), they pay taxes when they spend money (again, more than most), they pay taxes to own property. On top of that, their money gets invested, where it can be used to foster more economic activity that creates more jobs. Some patronize the arts. Some support charities. If they spend on a lavish lifestyle, well somebody gets paid to make the mansions, the jets, the boats, the solid gold toilet seats, and somebody gets paid for the upkeep or operation of same. "The rich" are hardly a burden on the rest of us. Jealousy should be no basis for public policy.Yesterday at 12:46pm · · 4 people - Mac Fuentes Trish, don't know about the others but I got your last post via email and you're right, no one wants to hear from the other side. We've been divided too long, it's pointless. Personally I don't care for the religous right but the economic left is far worse. I would be happy to help the poor but not by bringing everyone else down to their level so we are all considered middle class. Private enterprise and capitalism is the best way to bring everyone willing to work, up to a comfortable lifestyle. There will always be those who won't do anything for themselves and if they earn your pity then that's on you. Obviously physical and/or mental catastrophe excluded, there will also be those who need assistance and we have enough to provide for them. If we can elect leaders that will allow business to function and get the stupid gov. regulation out of the way, we might recover from the current situation. Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Frank, they need to go and as soon as the repubs start in on the social issues, they will need to go too. If we could just get 537 independent politicians in D.C., think of the possibilities!Yesterday at 3:58pm · · 1 person
- Trish Foerster MacCabe And the vultures attack... That didn't take long at all. I started to rebut a couple times but have decided it's not worth my time. There is nothing that I can say that would make you see things from a different perspective. We are fundamentally different. You see what you want to see and clearly feel a need to hammer anyone who feels differently. But btw - have you looked at the long term statisitics on private schools? You might save yourself some money.Yesterday at 3:59pm ·
- Trish Foerster MacCabe Thank you for speaking some sense. Sometimes I think people get so worked up about these things that they stop thinking. I wish I could remember what I wrote... I deleted it realizing that there were no words I could say that would make you see things from my perspective. It's very sad that that's where we're at. We stop talking because the conversations become too hard and feel futile. The truth is that it's with the friction that we make progress. We stoptalking and we become stagnant. I am not a huge Pelosi fan but I gotta say that I think that Obama is a victim of the political machine. I believe he could have done so much if given the chance. He is fielding the nasty Republican's who are hammering him to the ground on one side and then the far lefties are pissed because he didn't address their issues immediately. The guy can't win! If both sides had truly tried to compromise more people would have won and we'd be less divided.Yesterday at 4:21pm ·
Sheila Collins Ferguson i shall now officially go back to my "non-politics" stance on FB. I may "like" stuff of others but i'm not re-posting (for a while at least) b/c i'm tired of the judgements from those who think they know what I mean and what I care about....unsure when/where they got those "SUPER POWERS"!?!?!?Yesterday at 8:04pm ·- Mark Romer Vultures? Ah, you must mean we who feast on the rotting carcasses of dead arguments :) As for helping me see different perspectives, I'm always open to exploring reasonable ideas.Yesterday at 8:18pm ·
Pat McGarry Starve the poor, and deny health care if they can't pay. Or tax the wealthy.19 hours ago · · 1 person- Sheila Collins Ferguson Since nobody asked, I am going to state what I originally thought of this quote when I posted it: I think of this quote as hyperbole (yes, I had to look that up to get the right word I wanted) describing ALL of us who are doing some form of good works in society. As long as we are doing the work, we are called saints, but when we try to question the systemic problems of why our work is necessary then we are labeled in unpleasant ways. THIS IS ONLY MY OPINION (and not a stereotype of ALL conservatives), but it feels like some people want to make sure someone is taking care of the problems, but they don't like anyone questioning why our society has allowed these "inconveniences" become problems. It has become UN-21 minutes ago ·
- Sheila Collins Ferguson oops that posted before I was done...anyways, I feel (again only I FEEL THIS and am not trying to state it as the only right way to believe) that it has become UN-American to question why we have such a growing problem with poverty and poor education. It's like we are admitting failure and that is just terribly UN-American to admit failure b/c Lordy, we live in the best gosh darn nation in the world. The only questions that seem to be patriotic these days is questioning the right/wrong of a particular partisan position. Neither side is getting us anywhere in solving some HUGE problems that need to be addressed. I agree the USA is going down a terribly bad path, but I do not agree that it is the current President or the current Congress's fault. It's the fault of all those of us who do not chip in our fair share (be it taxes or be it volunteer effort to help those who are truly less fortunate--i.e. people with disabilities and children in poverty).14 minutes ago ·
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