Have-nots are forgotten

Thursday, December 15, 2011

As Newt Gingrich, who fancies himself an historian, might muse, where is Marie Antoinette now that we need a sound bite to justify cutting fuel assistance for America’s neediest people?

“Let ’em burn their furniture,” Marie might have said.

In New Hampshire, the slashing of fuel assistance means that we’re getting less than half of what we need to help our neediest people stay warm.

This idiocy started with a major cut in federal funding that forced new income guidelines from the state that mean if you earn more than $1,511 a month as a two-person household, you won’t get any help. The old limit was $2,418 a month, which didn’t exactly make you rich, but it was better. The new guideline is less than $400 a week. Who in Washington is trying to live on that? Who in Washington thinks you can live on that?

Whom to blame? If you’re a Democrat, of course, you blame Republicans because they only care about their wealthy friends. If you’re a Republican, you blame Democrats for encouraging people to rely upon government rather than pulling themselves up by those bootstraps that, surely, everyone has.

We blame them all. We had great faith in President Obama and we still believe that he wants to do good things for the middle class and for the poor. And we understand why he came into office hoping to be conciliatory, hoping to work with the Republicans to right the ship of state: because he was a naive believer. He really thought that government was for the people, not for the elected. Surprise.

Government, the president has discovered, is about staying in office. Just ask Charlie Bass who promised to limit his term but kept running and running and running and ... he’s still running, for crying out loud.

President Obama tried to give health care to those who don’t have it and perhaps his plan is seriously flawed, but at least he tried. What’s the GOP plan? Oh, right: nothing.

The biggest problem we have in this nation right now is the gap between the haves and the have-littles, never mind the have-nots who are so far off the radar screen that they might as well take Jonathan Swift’s recommendation and, as he suggested for the Irish, just eat their children if they’re so hungry.

And nothing is going to change after the 2012 election, regardless of the outcome. Obama will be a lame duck whose own party keeps wondering when he’s going to start being more like Harry Truman and less like Jimmy Carter. A Romney or Gingrich presidency will be more of the Bush same, i.e., help the people who can afford greens fees. Jon Huntsman would give one hope if he had a chance to win.

Instead, next November, it’s going to be a choice between an incumbent who can’t seem to understand that he has to lead, or a Ken-like candidate who can’t seem to understand that he has to stand for something, or a Washington insider-lobbyist who stands for all kinds of things that will be of no discernible help to anyone who doesn’t run in his circle.

Great. Meanwhile, if you’re a have-little or a have-not, bundle up this winter, or hope that global warming is here right now.