Edwards: a glib statistical illiterate on poverty
John Edwards gets caught with his pants down investing big chunks with the very funds he is attacking for foreclosing on Katrina victims, and he says, “I intend to help these people“:
The Wall Street Journal has identified 34 New Orleans homes whose owners have faced foreclosure suits from subprime-lending units of Fortress Investment Group LLC. Mr. Edwards has about $16 million invested in Fortress funds, according to a campaign aide who confirmed a more general Federal Election Commission report. Mr. Edwards worked for Fortress, a publicly held private-equity fund, from late 2005 through 2006.
Asked about the matter, Mr. Edwards yesterday pledged that he would personally provide financial assistance to New Orleanians who are facing foreclosure by Fortress-affiliated businesses or have lost their homes already. “I intend to help these people,” the former North Carolina senator said.
What does he even mean? Does he really think that his petty fortune is going to make a dent in the poverty problem in New Orleans?
Does he function on such a shallowly symbolic level that he thinks if he sends some cash to the WSJ 34, he’ll have solved a problem? Does he think the underlying problems and the business practices WSJ highlighted in New Orleans are not occurring elsewhere but out of the limelight?
Is Edwards now conducting a personal war on poverty? What scares me is that this impulsive glibness reflects a deeper illiteracy about economics and taxes. It’s closely related to the fallacy that if we just impose confiscatory taxes on the top 2% of wage earners, we can pay for all the goodies we want to give the poor and middle class.
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