The Heritage Foundation Are Evil Liars

Imagine that you have personally dealt with hearing loss due to an untreated ear infection--since your family had no health insurance. Imagine that you have been in foster care, because your home did not have sufficient heat. Imagine being an American, surrounded by SUVs, HDTVs, and unspeakable wealth, but you rely on lunches at the Salvation Army. Good days are when you get *two* small milk cartons.


Unless you have been through these experiences, you probably cannot accurately imagine any of these things. Yet, people like Charles Murray (he co-authored, the Bell Curve) and Robert Rector from the Heritage Foundation, write constantly about the alleged romantic experience of poverty. They do everything in their considerable power to tell Americans and the rest of the world that poverty is bliss. They have--without conscience--lied to the American public by saying that welfare creates poverty.

Poverty is evil. It tears apart families, it stunts lives, and it lingers as anger in its victims. I have written letters to both the Heritage Foundation and Charles Murray. They know that there are people being hurt by their distortions, but they continue to launch a war on poor people.

Robert Rector thinks that since the poor people in the U.S. have a limited number of material goods, they are rich. In his September 24, 1998, Wall Street Journal article entitled, "America Has the World's Richest Poor People," Mr. Rector had the nerve to say that the trauma of American poverty was not destitution. He does not understand anything about relative poverty or the pain that it can inflict. He seems to think that poor people should walk around America imagining that they live in Romania, Kenya, or other nations, so they can feel rich. No matter that they have only the U.S. as a frame of reference.

He claims the poor have plenty of living space. As you can see by the picture, our house was wonderful. Six children with three bedrooms. Plenty of space. Rector claims a lot of poor people own their home. My mom bought our family home for $13,000 in the late 1980s. I guess he is right about vast home ownership among the poor.
Rector stated, "Two-­thirds of poor households have air­- conditioning." Sure, they do. We never knew anyone with air, or else we would have hung out at their place.




Rector is actually uneducated enough to believe that obesity is a sign of being over-nourished, when most reputable doctors will tell you that high starch, low protein diets are what packs on the pounds. He claims that poor children get lots of meat and they are super-nourished. Ha! We didn't have meat unless it was through school lunch, but Rector likely wants to cut that program. As the picture shows, the kids in our family were obviously spoiled and "super nourished."

Rector also wants us to believe that the poor are better off than in the past, and the rich are barely holding ground. As he wrote, "For decades, both conventional wisdom and the Census Bureau have told us that "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer." Most "poor" Americans today are better housed and better fed and own more personal property than average Americans throughout much of this century."