You might think that there are a lot of poor people in America, given the way that Democrats are always talking about the need to take money away from job creating businesses and working families to hand out in welfare to the 47% who pay no income tax. The U.S. Census says that lots of people are poor in America. But is it really true?

Here’s an article from the Daily Signal to explain.

It says:

On Tuesday, the Census Bureau released its annual poverty report declaring that 43.1 million Americans lived in poverty in 2015.

We should be concerned about any American living in real material hardship, but much of what the Census reports about poverty is misleading.

Here are 15 facts about poverty in America that may surprise you.  (All statistics are taken from U.S. government surveys.)

• Poor households routinely report spending $2.40 for every $1 of income the Census says they have.
• The average poor American lives in a house or apartment that is in good repair and has more living space than the average nonpoor person in France, Germany, or England.
• Eighty-five percent of poor households have air conditioning.
• Nearly three-fourths of poor households have a car or truck, and 31 percent have two or more cars or trucks.
• Nearly two-thirds of poor households have cable or satellite TV.
• Half have a personal computer; 43 percent have internet access.
• Two-thirds have at least one DVD player
• More than half of poor families with children have a video game system, such as an Xbox or PlayStation.
• One-third have a wide-screen plasma or LCD TV.

(The above data on electronic appliances owned by poor households come from a 2009 government survey so the ownership rates among the poor today are most likely higher.)

Activist groups spread alarming stories about widespread hunger in the nation, but in reality, most of the poor do not experience hunger or food shortages. The U.S. Department of Agriculture collects data on these topics in its household food security survey. For 2009, the survey showed:

• Only 4 percent of poor parents reported that their children were hungry even once during the prior year because they could not afford food.
• Some 18 percent of poor adults reported they were hungry even once in the prior year due to lack of money for food.

The following are facts about the housing conditions of the poor.

• Poverty and homelessness are sometimes confused. Over the course of a year, only 4 percent of poor persons become homeless (usually a temporary condition).
• Only 9.5 percent of the poor live in mobile homes or trailers; the rest live in apartments or houses.
• Forty percent of the poor own their own homes, typically, a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths that is in good repair.
• The left claims that one in 25 families with children live in “extreme poverty” on less than $2 per person per day. Government surveys of self-reported spending by families show the actual number is one in 4,469, not one in 25.  The typical family allegedly in “extreme poverty” reports spending $25 for every $1 of income the left claims they have.

Why does the Census identify so many individuals as “poor” who do not appear to be poor in any normal sense of the term?  The answer lies in the misleading way the Census measures “poverty.” The Census defines a family as poor if its income falls below a specified income threshold. (For example, the poverty threshold for a family of four in 2015 was $24,036.) But in counting “income,” the Census excludes nearly all welfare benefits.

In 2014, government spent over $1 trillion on means-tested welfare for poor and low income people. (This figure does not include Social Security or Medicare.) Welfare spending on cash, food, and housing was $342 billion.

I’ve talked before about how welfare programs incentivize young women to have fatherless children, and how fatherless children put a burden on society through crime and other unhealthy behaviors. What is really going on here is that there is not very much real poverty in the United States, but talking about poverty is just a way that Democrats trick the public into supporting more confiscation of wealth from job creators so that the Democrats can buy votes from people.

The right solution to poverty, of course, is to encourage young people to marry, to eliminate teacher unions, to enact vouchers for school choice, and to give financial incentives to people who want to start a business or hire people for their existing business. Democrats are opposed to all of these measures, because they rely on keeping people unmarried, unemployed and dependent on welfare in order to get votes. Government spending to alleviate poverty is just vote buying, especially when the welfare is not temporary and attached to a requirement to look for work.

The Daily Caller reports:

Until this past month, Aric Babbit was a popular elementary school teacher in South St. Paul who was active in the community. But it all came crashing down two weeks ago, when a teenage boy and his parents went to the police and reported an ongoing sexual relationship between the boy and both Babbit and his husband, Matthew Deyo.

According to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the boy turned over photos of himself naked with Babbit, and said Babbit, his former elementary teacher, had begun “mentoring” him after he came out as gay. Red flags quickly emerged, with Babbit and Deyo providing the boy underwear and yoga shorts as gifts, but the boy’s parents were assuaged by being told it was a “gay thing.” Eventually, the boy was convinced to go to a jazz concert and stay with the couple in a hotel room, where the boy allegedly had sex with them because he was “unsure about how to say no.”

A police investigation quickly discovered additional victims, who said the couple had provided them with pornography, encouraged them to post naked pictures online, and provided them with “chiropractic” massages. According to court documents seen by the Star-Tribune, Babbit and Deyo took kids on a trip to the Twin Cities gay pride festival, where Babbit became angry that a boy wouldn’t have sex with him after he’d spent thousands of dollars on him.

They also found other disturbing pieces of evidence. Notably, a search of their house found a hidden camera behind a clock in the bathroom, along with a computer folder with the decidedly unappealing title “Kiddies.” According to the St. Paul Pioneer Press, multiple boys told the police about “strange situations in the bathroom” where Babbit would encourage them to masturbate there, apparently in the hopes of obtaining video.

The age of the victim at the time of these events was 16, according to the far left Minneapolis Star Tribune article linked in the DC article.

This reminds me of some other cases that I read about in the news. Here is one from the far left Los Angeles Times.

Excerpt:

A former USC professor once on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted fugitives list pleaded guilty Friday to flying to the Philippines and sexually assaulting underage boys he groomed online.

Walter Lee Williams, 65, admitted engaging in illegal sexual contact with minors in foreign places, entering the plea during a brief appearance before U.S. District Judge Phillip S. Gutierrez.

As part of a plea, federal prosecutors agreed to recommend that the onetime eminent professor of gender and sexuality studies serve no more than five years in a federal prison. He also would be subject to 10 years supervision upon release and must pay $25,000 in restitution to his seven victims. Williams will be sentenced Dec. 15.

He was apprehended within a day of making the FBI’s Most Wanted List in June 2013 after he was indicted on sex crimes involving two 14-year-old boys in the Philippines. He was captured in the Mexican coastal town of Playa del Carmen after a resident recognized his photo from a newspaper.

Los Angeles Police Department Deputy Chief Michel Moore said Williams’ conduct came to light three years ago when a person concerned about the safety of children contacted authorities.

Williams taught anthropology, gender studies and history at USC for about two decades until he quit in 2011. Under the guise of academic research on sexuality in the Southeast Asia/Pacific region, he repeatedly traveled to the area.

Federal prosecutors alleged that the author and Fulbright Award winner used those trips to sexually assault underage boys. Investigators believe he has at least 10 victims across Southeast Asia, aged 9 to 17.

Williams engaged in webcam sex sessions with two boys, aged 13 and 14, in the Philippines in 2010. The next year, he traveled to the country and sexually assaulted both boys and a 15-year-old boy, according to the plea agreement. He was 62 at the time.

While there, he also had sexual contact with three other 16-year-old boys, records show.

When he returned to Los Angeles International Airport on Feb. 11, 2011, he was “intercepted,” and child pornography was found on him. The professor fled Los Angeles a week after being interviewed by the FBI.

An attorney for USC last year provided the FBI with materials the professor donated to the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives that contained “lascivious visual depictions of minors,” according to the plea agreement. FBI agents also obtained similar images from Williams’ former home.

Here’s another from the radically leftist San Francisco Chronicle.

Excerpt:

Veteran gay rights advocate and former San Francisco Human Rights Commission staffer Larry Brinkin pleaded guilty Tuesday to possessing child pornography.

Brinkin, 67, changed his plea in a deal with the district attorney’s office that will result in a sentencing recommendation of six months in county jail, six months of home detention, five years of probation and lifetime registration as a sex offender.

Brinkin, who worked as a senior contract compliance officer with the rights commission until his 2010 retirement, was arrested in June 2012. Authorities said e-mail attachments were found on his America Online subscriber’s account that contained images of toddlers engaged in sex acts with men.

Prosecutors originally charged him with six felony counts of possessing and distributing child pornography, but dropped all but one felony count of possession as part of the plea bargain.

Brinkin must undergo sex offender therapy and is banned from working with kids, contacting a juvenile without parental consent, and living with someone responsible for a child without disclosing his offender status.

During his 22-year tenure at the rights commission, Brinkin helped craft the city’s Equal Benefits Ordinance, which became a national model for workplace equality for gays and lesbians. When he retired, the Board of Supervisors declared the week of Feb. 1, 2010, as Larry Brinkin Week.

Brinkin, who appeared in court with his husband, has been out on $240,000 bail since September 2012. He is scheduled to return for sentencing on March 5, and to surrender into custody at a later date.

The NY Daily News reports on another similar case, and links to CBS News and the Hartford Courant.

Excerpt:

The case of a same-sex Connecticut couple accused of repeatedly raping and abusing two of their nine adopted boys is headed for trial.

Married couple George Harasz and Douglas Wirth of Glastonbury were supposed to be sentenced Friday in Hartford Superior Court under a plea deal, but instead withdrew from their agreement with prosecutors. The men had already pleaded no contest in January to one felony count each of risk of injury to a minor — a reduction from even more serious charges related to sexual assault.

[…]Harasz and Wirth adopted nine children — three sets of male siblings — beginning in 2000, and ran a home-based dog breeding business called The Puppy Guy.

The couple was arrested in November 2011 following a police and state investigation of sex-abuse allegations. The children were removed from the home.

Police said two boys, ages 5 and 15, accused Harasz of sexually assaulting them. Harasz was initially facing first-degree sexual assault and other charges, while Wirth had been charged with third-degree sexual assault of the 15-year-old boy.

Their arrest warrants claimed the couple not only sexually and physically abused the children, but also forced them to sleep in closets.

[…]One of the victims who spoke during the court hearing said sexual assault began when he was 6.

“They took turns raping me over and over,” he said.

This story was reported in the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

During his ordeal Mr Cannon was repeatedly plied with Ecstasy and cannabis before being molested by David Cannon and John Scarfe.

His complaints to care workers were ignored and at one stage he was wrongly diagnosed as having mental disorders.

Both men were eventually arrested and charged after Mr Cannon was readmitted to into council care following a domestic incident, at which point he managed to persuade a Forster carer he was being abused.

Cannon, 54, and 31-year old Scarfe were each jailed for 30 months in 2006, for inciting sexual activity with a child.

[…]Cannon was allowed to adopt Andy in December 1997, when the youngster was aged eight. This came despite the fact he had earlier been convicted and put on probation for 12 months for assaulting the boy’s mother, Elaine Moss, possessing cannabis and handling a stolen computer.

Miss Moss had also claimed Cannon had been abusing her son.

A social worker failed to bring the allegations to the attention of the family court and instead called Cannon a “very caring parent who considered his children’s need”.

And here’s another similar story from UK Sky News, this time from Scotland where the head of a gay youth organization was running a child sex ring.

Excerpt:

Eight men in a Scottish paedophile ring have been found guilty of a series of “horrific” sex offences against children and babies.

[…]Two of the men – convicted sex offender Neil Strachan and gay rights campaigner James Rennie – were convicted of sex attacks on children.

Strachan, 41, and Rennie, 38, both from Edinburgh, were also found guilty of conspiring to abuse youngsters, as were three other members of the gang.

[…]The jury found Rennie, the former chief of LGBT Youth Scotland, an organisation dedicated to helping young gay people, guilty of molesting a young boy over more than four years.

The child was just three months old when the abuse began.

And of course we had the story of the two gay activists who adopted a boy from Russia and were later convicted of pedophilia. The co-founder of the Human Rights Campaign was also arrested for underage sex with a teenaged boy.