Just hours after winning the Florida primary, Mitt Romney let loose a potential gaffe that turned what should have been a rallying moment for Republican supporters into an uncomfortable position of having to defend the man that is likely to face Obama in the general election.

If taken out of context, which the media is very adept to doing, Romney’s comment, “I’m not concerned about the very poor” sounds heartless and indefensible. In fact, that is exactly how many conservative commentators reacted.

From a purely political position, the criticism is reasonable. Romney effectively handed Democrats a shiny set of brass-knuckles to use against, not only him, but the Republican Party in general as being out of touch with every day Americans. As NRO’s David Kahane put it, “In the Fight of the Century between the Apologetic Oligarch and the Tribune of the Folks, who do you think the fans will be rooting for?” In other words, Romney unwillingly played into the class-warfare meme that Obama has wrapped himself in.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech discuss last night’s testy debate in South Carolina, Newt’s battle with Juan Williams, and the millions of Americans on government hand out programs.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Rivals attack Romney in testy debate
Video: Newt Gingrich vs. Juan Williams
Ben: Be it resolved …
Over 46 Million Americans On Foodstamps For The First Time Ever

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Frances Fox Piven, one of the co-authors of the Cloward-Piven strategy to overwhelm the state with millions of additional welfare claimants, has published an article in the Nation calling for the Occupy Wall Street movement to re-invigorate itself by recruiting the poor.

Photo source: aeu.org

In a telling admission that Occupy does not, in fact, represent the poor, Piven criticizes both liberals and unions for their repeated use of the term “middle class” in their political campaigns. Instead, she said, Occupy must appeal to issues that poor Americans care about:

To fully realize an ethic of inclusion, the poorest and most benighted Americans should become part of our protest movement. We need to increase their numbers at our demonstrations, and we need to undertake the protest actions that deal with their most urgent needs—including the attacks on the social safety net that hit them hardest.

While remnants of the ACORN organization did, apparently, pay poor people to attend Occupy Wall Street, Piven envisions a strategy that has a clearer ideological component. Instead of overwhelming the welfare system, as she once advocated, Piven now believes poor people should be mobilized to defend it–ironically, perhaps, since the long hoped-for possibility of financial insolvency is no longer distant.

Piven believes that an Occupy movement that succeeds in recruiting “a proud and angry” poor could bring about the kind of radical change that the American left had long sought (and which, perhaps, it had hoped to achieve in the Obama presidency):

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The Center for Freedom and Prosperity has released another “Economics 101″ video, and this one has a very powerful message about the federal government’s so-called War on Poverty.

As explained by Hadley Heath of the Independent Women’s Forum, the various income redistribution schemes being imposed by Washington are bad for taxpayers – and bad for poor people.

The video has a plethora of useful information, but the data on the poverty rate is particularly compelling. Prior to the War on Poverty, the United States was getting more prosperous with each passing year and there were dramatic reductions in the level of destitution.

But once the federal government got involved in the mid-1960s, the good news evaporated. Indeed, the poverty rate has basically stagnated for the past 40-plus years, usually hovering around 13 percent depending on economic conditions.

Another remarkable finding in the video is that poor people in America rarely suffer from material deprivation. Indeed, they have wide access to consumer goods that used to be considered luxuries – and they also have more housing space than the average European (and with Europe falling apart, the comparisons presumably will become even more noteworthy).

The most important message of the video, however, is that small government and economic freedom are the best answers for poverty.

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From National Journal:

As lawmakers continue to joust over how to accelerate growth and unleash job creation, the Census numbers are a timely reminder of how mightily the U.S. economy struggled over the last decade — and particularly over the last few years, during and after the Great Recession.

Consider:

• Last year, real median income dipped below $50,000 a year for the first time since 1996.
• By that measure — median income — this is the worst post-recession economy ever recorded by the Census Bureau (which began compiling this data in 1967). From 2009 to 2010, real median income fell by 2.3 percent, a steeper drop than the years that followed the end of recessions in the 1970s, ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s.

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The Census Bureau has just released the 2010 poverty numbers, and the new data is terrible.

There are now a record number of poor people in America, and the poverty rate has jumped to 15.1 percent.

But I don’t really blame President Obama for these grim numbers. Yes, he’s increased the burden of government, which doubtlessly has hindered the economy’s performance and made things worse, but the White House crowd legitimately can argue that they inherited a crummy situation.

What’s really striking, if we look at the chart, is that the poverty rate in America was steadily declining. But then, once President Lyndon Johnson started a “War on Poverty,” that progress came to a halt.

As I’ve explained before, the so-called War on Poverty has undermined economic progress by trapping people in lives of dependency. And this certainly is consistent with the data in the chart, which show that the poverty rate no longer is falling and instead bumps around between 12 percent and 15 percent.

This is bad news for poor people, of course, but it’s also bad news for taxpayers. The federal government, which shouldn’t have any role in the field of income redistribution, has squandered trillions of dollars on dozens of means-tested programs. And they’ve arguably made matters worse.

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Nowadays everyone has a cell phone.  In fact, most can’t even recall how life happened before cell phones existed.

But there is one group of Americans who largely remain contract free and live without the convenience of a smart phone.  Many in that group are considered America’s poor, who simply cannot afford such a luxury.

This untapped market has not gone unnoticed.  The federal government is now busy working with telecommunications companies to make sure everyone enjoys the comfort of cell phone ownership—even if they can’t afford it.

“The program is about peace of mind,” says Gary Carter, manager of national partnerships for Assurance Wireless, a company helping low-income people obtain cell phones.  “It’s one less bill that someone has to pay, so they can pay their rent or for day care. … It is a right to have peace of mind.”

Does the federal government, in partnering with companies like Assurance Wireless, see owning a cell phone as a right? Since the program cost $1.32 billion in 2010, it makes it pretty clear that yes, the federal government thinks that owning a cell phone is now a right.

Through programs called Lifeline or SafeLink, low-income people can now apply to receive a cell phone of their very own, free of charge.  Some programs allow up to 250 free minutes a month.  For a low-income person to qualify for a free cell phone, one must meet federal low-income guidelines or qualify for one of many social service programs, including food stamps or Medicaid or even school lunch programs.

Funds for this program come from the federal Universal Service Fund.

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Our President blames the Bush Administration. Many on Wall Street are now blaming Obama. Democrats blame Republicans. Republicans blame Democrats.  Who really is at fault for our economic troubles?

The answer is rather simple.

Government and those that proclaim it can solve so many of our problems – regardless of their party.

In 1959, in an interview with Mike Wallace, Ayn Rand posited that:

“A free economy will not break down. All depressions are caused by government interference and the cure that is always offered . . . is more of the same poisons that caused the disasters.”

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During the campaign in 2008, President Obama made his tax message as clear as it could be: he wanted to tax the wealthy, and help the poor. He promised over and over that taxes on those making less than $250,000 would not go up. So why has the president proposed a health care tax on the poor?

A frequent line by candidate Obama in his stump speeches during the election went something like this:

“Let me be absolutely clear. If you are a family making less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes go up.”

Despite this promise, we’ve already had the federal tax hike on cigarettes to fund children’s health care (S-CHIP), an excise tax that impacts the poor profoundly more than the wealthy because of the inverse relationship between smoking and income.

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