A Political Rule of Thumb

"...as a general rule of thumb if you see a large, powerful, well-organized lobby citing the needs of the poor as the rationale for something or other they're almost certainly full of it." - Matthew Yglesias

But then comes this sentence, which raises one's liberal back-hair:

In the real world, poor people have extremely little political clout and
anything that's attracting a lot of political attention is almost certainly
doing so because it's of concern to the non-poor.

Which I believe is factually true under our current system. Money talks, poverty walks. That's the reason for opposing our current electoral system, which centers around massive ad campaigns and 30-second soundbites. It's why Barack Obama's "people-powered" Internet fundraising campaign is not as revolutionary as the Democrats fancy it to be. It's still fueling the cycle of Big Money elections, which biases results towards an upper-middle class that can afford to max out its General Election donations.