American Enterprise Institute : "Poor in America doing pretty darn well"

This smug, self-satisfied weasel by the name of Kevin Hassett, from the American Enterprise Institute was being interviewed by satellite link this evening for the BBC's Newsnight programme, during a feature regarding the levels of poverty in the United States following some shocking statistics released today.

The following words crawled out of Hassett's mouth:

“I don’t think there is an unusually high level of gnashing of teeth over poverty at this moment.

The poor in America are doing pretty darn well compared to most people in the rest of the world, and to assert otherwise would be, again, to mislead… in fact people below the poverty line in the United States, by many measures, live much better than the average person in France.

They’re more likely to have a car, they’re more likely to have appliances like a washer/dryer and a television, they’ve got a bigger home…”

The full programme streaming video can be seen HERE for the next 24 hrs only.

I don’t have software to grab the stream and reduce it to the relevant clip, which starts at 7min 35secs, but I've sent it to Crooks and Liars and the wonderful Tom at Information Clearing House, so maybe they'll pick it up.