No Comment Department

In its annual report on income in America, published just before the arrival of Katrina made things much worse, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that the poverty rate increased in 2004 for the fourth straight year. Thirtyseven million (37,000,000) Americans -- 12.7% of the population -- live in the government's not-very-generous definition of poverty, four million more than in 2001 and the highest level in a decade (Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance in 2004, pdf).