Poverty

October 15th is Blog Action Day, when bloggers are encouraged to post about a single topic to raise awareness. This year's topic was poverty, and I was going to write an in-detail explanation of Obama's plan to reduce it.

Unfortunately, I flaked out yesterday, so I'm backdating this post and doing a sort of half-assed version of it. Instead of analyzing, I'm giving you all a link to his plan and this article about its innovation.

I'll also say, that it's been sad how little this topic has been discussed during the presidential campaign. Too bad John Edwards got caught stepping out and lost his position as an anti-poverty advocate. Without him, the conversation shifted to helping the middle class, which was at least still important and relevant to many Americans. Then, during the third debate, the whole conversation shifted in a totally absurd way to Joe the Plumber who makes more than a quarter million dollars a year. I'd point out that the middle class is made up mostly of people who make no where near $250,000, but since McCain suggested that it takes an annual income of $5 million to be considered rich, I think his out-of-touch-ness is pretty well established already.