Bill O'Reilly is so smart. He wants to teach John Edwards about poverty by telling him (and us) that poor people aren't really poor:

If you earn less than $10,000, you are poor. If a family of four earns less than $21,000, they are poor. Yet according to the government census, poor households in America have lots of stuff.

Ninety-seven percent have a color TV, 78 percent a DVD player, 80 percent an air conditioner, 73 percent a car or truck, 63 percent cable or satellite TV, and 43 percent of poor households in the USA own the home they are living in.

So if the poor are not destitute in America, and they obviously are not, why are so many veterans sleeping under bridges, John Edwards? The answer again is they're mostly addicted or mentally ill. It has nothing to do with the economy.

I'm sure that in BOR's mind, poor people should be filthy and dressed in tattered, stinking rags, screaming at invisible voices and pushing shopping carts filled with their worldly possessions. Kind of like how some trolls claimed that the homeless veterans in FOX ATTACKS! "Non-Existent" Veterans were too respectably groomed and dressed to be homeless, even having the audacity to have cell phones with earpieces.

BOR has no concept of the WORKING POOR. What a struggle it would be to provide food and a roof for a family of four when your household makes less than $21,000 a year. That people can work full time jobs (sometimes more than one) and still be poor. That people can have things but barely be making it.

For many poor and homeless people, a car is their one essential possession, a storage unit, and sometimes their home. If you don't have a car or truck, you can't get to work. Without a car, you might not be able to get your kid or yourself to school, or take care of a relative. For most Americans who don’t live in cities, a car is not a luxury item. Losing a car is the beginning of the end. But, as we know, cars can be an enormous drain on a family's resources, especially with gas prices skyrocketing thanks to the Iraq war, the resulting Middle East instability, the devaluing of the dollar, and bad relations with oil-producing countries — all results of the Bush administration. Then there is maintenance on top of that, and god forbid the car needs a major repair. What happens to a family of four making under $21,000/year when they have to make an essential $3,000 repair to their car and still need at least $50/week to fill the damn thing up? It looks like at least 27% of their yearly income. And that’s not counting the cost of insurance.

I have a story for you about poor people and TVs. Over the past several years, I have made trips to Kansas City to visit a good friend and take pictures for the Migrant Farmworkers Project. MFP provides donations of food, clothes, toys, and household items to migrant families as well as helping them enroll their kids in school, get healthcare, take classes, and receive services that are available to them.

One of MFP’s projects is in a small town in rural Missouri called Lexington, where workers come up for the apple harvests. One thing I am always asked to take pictures of is the living conditions of workers and their families. These dwellings range from trailer homes (for higher earning families that live in the area year-round) to worker housing for single men provided by the farms, which often consist of run-down rows of rooms with up to 6-8 bunk beds in each room, along with a table, some chairs, and a stove. Sometimes over twenty people share a single toilet or one shower. The floors are concrete and the rooms are dark.

And guess what I found at every one of these trailers and worker shacks? Satellite dishes and air conditioners. Want to know why? Do what BOR is incapable of doing: imagine you were living the life of someone else.

First, the obvious — in many parts of the country, it is extremely difficult to live without an air conditioner, especially if there are 6-8 hot, sweaty, exhausted farmworkers crammed in one room waiting for their turn to take a shower, or an entire family in a single-wide. It would be miserable without A/C. I'm sure BOR can't even imagine what it's like to be somewhere that isn’t climate controlled.

Imagine you worked all day at a difficult job for very little money, whether it be working at Wal-Mart, busing tables, landscaping, or picking the fruits and vegetables that Americans eat. You come home from work exhausted and just want to relax a while, maybe hang out with your family or friends, and go to sleep before you have to wake up and do the whole exhausting thing over again. You know what you might want to do? WATCH A LITTLE FUCKING TV. I'm no big TV watcher, but I realize that for a lot of people, TV is their one joy in life, a place where they can forget about the often considerable difficulties of their lives. TVs are cheap to buy new or used, so most people would have to be extremely poor before they sold something that gives them hours of extremely cheap, multi-user entertainment a day for only a few dollars. Same goes for DVD players.   

The migrant farmworkers in Lexington find themselves in a foreign country, separated from their families, and without a lot to do in the middle of an isolated, rural community that is not always friendly to them. Most of them are from Spanish-speaking countries, but there aren’t many Spanish-language channels in Lexington. So the best place for them to see Spanish-language shows is on cable or satellite. Several workers pool their money to pay for it. Then they can watch shows in a language they can understand, maybe favorites from their mother country, or sporting events (like soccer) that aren’t always covered on broadcast channels. I’m no defender of cable, but I say GIVE THESE PEOPLE A FUCKING BREAK. They just want to relax in the brief moments between sleep and low-paying, back-breaking jobs. Let them watch cable.

And I guess BOR can’t imagine that people who get laid off might end up losing their homes, especially as the sub-prime hurricane continues to ravage the US. Or that the average income for American households has been falling during the Bush economy, even as prices for fuel, food, power, and healthcare have risen. The only reason median household earnings rose slightly in 2006 is because more people per household were forced to enter the work force or work longer hours to make ends meet, and average household incomes are still below their peak in 2001.

Yes, it’s true that many poor people in America are not destitute, which is defined as “lacking all money, resources, and possessions necessary for subsistence.” Know why that is? BECAUSE WE LIVE IN AMERICA. This isn’t a third world country. We have a higher standard of living in the US. In a country as rich as ours, is there a morally justifiable reason why we should have a large number of destitute people? What is that good for? Who does it benefit? Yes, there was a time when people didn't have TVs and air conditioners and got by. But we don’t live in those times, and it’s ridiculous to say that poor people should be forced to live in another era. We live in America in the 21st century. We should act like it.

It’s all a ruse that BOR and republicans like to play. If you aren’t a bum on the street, you aren’t poor and don’t need any help. If you are a bum on the street, it’s your own fault, you’re beyond help, so you don’t deserve any.

That’s BOR’s lesson.

(I’ll address BOR’s twisting of Edwards’ statements and BOR’s claim that vets are homeless because of addiction and mental illness in another post)