Dickey,

Actually, compared to the nergy you have used up stalking an' attackin' me, I've used up little to no energy in avoding answering your question... Your question is so simplistic that I can't understand why you think it's the "holy grail" of this discussion... You have elivated your rather benign nit-pick into some kinda ah-hah-Bobert-gotcha-monster when it is is less than a cockroach... I just don't get your question...

I point out that poor folks are being displaced becuase of high rents in DC and if they can saty in the city are having to live in very dangerous neigborhoods and you go balistic??? I just don't get yer question, I guess... What is the big deal here, Dickey??? I mean, gol danged... It ain't rocket science...

You want to ba single mom working fir 8 bucks and hour with a couple kids and no husband in DC... Do the math... This woman and the millions just like her accross the US are seeing the same situation with urban center being revitalized and rents pricing them into the nastiest neigborhoods that haven't gone revitalization...

This isn't my imagination... It is a national trend...

So yeah, you can get a friggin' $475 a month apartment 3 miles north of Rock Creeek apartment... Do you want to raise yer kids there???

Now back to yer dad... Hey, my dad went thru the same crap... His mother died when he was 11 and he was sent off to work at age 11 on a farm but he made it okay...Never finished high school but ended up working as a district manager for Ford Motor Co... But that was then and this is now... Lots of folks came thru the depression and did just fine because after WW II there was work for anyone who wanted it and the pay was decent by late 40's/eraly 50's standards... That is as long as you were white...


But beyond that, Scoville is entirely correct... The guidelines are a joke... If we used realistic guidlines we'd probably double the number of folks who are living in poverty...

And guess what...Wiht the exception of the upper 1 ot 2% everyone is one catastropic illness away from joing those ranks... There isn't even a friggin law on the books that says that a health insurance carrier can't drop you if you get sick...

So, Fickey, lets say that tomorrow morning, you wake up and go for you annual checkup and the doc finds a spot in the exray and it's cancer... And so yer health insureer drops you 'casue, ahhhh, for no other reason but "they can" legally...

And the treeatment is going to be 'round $500,000, which it can very easially, you might be looking fir one of them $475 apartments in some ghettoe yerself...

Farfetched???

Well, yeah...

But this can happen to you...

Do, yeah, this is why I rail against the governemnt... Rather than "govern" a civil society they are stealing our national accumulated wealth and funneling it to the upper 1 to 2%...

This is not the way enlightened societies behave...

Period!!!

Bobert