Well said, NJer. We know that public welfare recipients enjoy far less goverment benefits than do military and government contractors, federally subsidized corporate entities and their owners and officers. But this is an irony that is never brought up by major political candidates.

And a further irony is that those who are clamoring for either Big Daddy protections or more localized freedoms don't themselves know what is really benefitting them or depriving them most. Millions of poor Americans are happily co-opted by a monthly handful of food stamps and welfare benefits while a handful of wealthy Americans are receiving millions of dollars apiece in subsidized income and profits from some of those very poverty programs.

Perhaps a reasonable reconciliation of the two, currently ill-informed, blocs of opposing voters might be achieved through better understanding of their sometimes mutual and sometimes disparate but legitmate needs .