GOP Lifeguard

Mike Luckovich.

CO Republican blames poverty on ‘the black race’s’ love of fried chicken

FOX31 Denver: Democratic lawmakers couldn’t believe their ears as they listened to Sen. Vicki Marble, R-Fort Collins, deliver a long soliloquy explaining that more blacks and Hispanics live in poverty, in part, because of fried chicken.

The comments came during a meeting of the Economic Opportunity Poverty Reduction Task Force Wednesday at the Capitol as lawmakers on the committee were presented with a number of statistics highlighting racial disparities in the poverty rate.

“When you look at life expectancy, there are problems in the black race: sickle-cell anemia is something that comes up, diabetes is something that’s prevalent in the genetic makeup and you just can’t help it,” Marble said. “Although I’ve got to say, I’ve never had better BBQ and better chicken and ate better in my life than when you go down south and you — I love it.”

Democrat Sen. Evie Hudak said, “there was an audible gasp in the room.”

Democratic Rep. Rhonda Fields, who is African-American, spoke of the incident and did not have kind things to say about her arguments.

“The title for this committee is the Economic Opportunity Poverty Reduction Task Force; and one of the things I will not tolerate is racist and insensitive comments about African Americans, the color of their skin. You mentioned what we eat — I was highly offended by your remarks,” Fields said, addressing Marble directly.

“I will not engage in a dialogue where I’m in the company where you are using the stereotype references about African Americans and chicken and food and all kinds of things. I will just not tolerate that,” Fields continued.

“This is not what this committee is all about. So I will ask that you suspend your perceptions and judgments about African Americans, about poverty — what we’re trying to do is come up with solutions and it’s not about chicken.

“It’s not about eating chicken.”

Marble released the far too familiar Republican non-apology for her remarks. “My comments were not meant to be disparaging to any community,” she said in a statement. “I am saddened they were taken in that regard. I take my responsibility seriously and I hope our work on this committee will offer real solutions to the health and financial challenges of our vulnerable populations.”

Translation: “If you thought that was racist, I’m sorry that you’re imagining things.” But this is just so common among Republicans. They always blame poverty on the poor. And isn’t it interesting that when the subject is the crappy food that’s all you can afford on food stamps, nutrition is not an issue. But when you want to blame poverty on the choices people make, nutrition is totally an issue?

Luckily, given the response to her remarks, I don’t think we’ll see Marble’s arguments again. They’re going to have to think up some new angle to blame poverty on the poor. Perhaps one that recognizes that most people in poverty are white. And they aren’t poor because they love them some frozen pizza so much.

[photo by Thomas Hawk]

Guess where it’s hardest to escape poverty?

David Leonhardt provides us with the above map showing the rate at which people escape poverty at various locations in the United States. And the deep south red states are appropriately red. For all their talk about giving people in poverty “a hand up, not a hand out," they seem to do a remarkable lousy job of doing either. And of course, another region hard hit is the rust belt, once a union stronghold where fair wages prevailed, which has fallen into hard times with the decline in organized labor and the resulting hits to the economy and tax base that comes with slowly sinking wages.

In Wisconsin, we too have a spot of red. That’d be Milwaukee County mostly, formerly run by our current Governor, Scott Walker. While it’s tempting to blame Milwaukee’s situation on Walker, it’s probably truer to blame it on former Gov. Tommy Thompson, who pioneered “welfare reform" that cuts people off of assistance for life after a set period of time. After Thompson’s legislation passed, rent-to-own, car title loan, and payday lender outfits sprouted up all over the place like mushrooms, leaving people trapped in poverty by tying a boat anchor to their legs in the form of a debt trap. Billed as a way to help people escape poverty, welfare reform has had the opposite result — leaving me to wonder if feeding the poor to usurious wolves wasn’t the plan all along. It’s telling that right next to the Milwaukee area on the map is the Madison area, where those crazy, pie-in-the-sky liberal economic policies nearly double the rate at which people escape poverty comparatively. Where Milwaukee’s rate is 5.6%, Madison drags the percentage — despite the anti-poor policies of the state — up to 10.2%.

In any case, we need a reversal of Republican policies, rather than a continuation of them. “Poor kids don’t exactly have a great chance in life no matter where they live, but in the South, they have almost no chance at all," writes Kevin Drum. “If you take a look at the policy preferences of Southern governors and legislatures, that’s apparently exactly the way they like it."

Conservatives, Melissa Harris-Perry has had it with your bullshit

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Raw Story:

A discussion on the racialized political rhetoric surrounding welfare took a turn close to home for Melissa Harris-Perry on her show Saturday morning, as she offered author and BusinessWeek columnist Monica Mehta a glimpse at the kind of places in which people who need of social-assistance programs often live.

Harris-Perry’s animated remarks were a response to Mehta’s opinion that President Barack Obama’s much-twisted “You didn’t build that” speech missed an emphasis on risk-taking, something she suggested enabled class mobility in America.

“What is riskier than living poor in America? Seriously!,” she said, slamming her hand on her desk. “What in the world is riskier than being a poor person in America? I live in a neighborhood where people are shot on my street corner. I live in a neighborhood where people have to figure out how to get their kid into school because maybe it will be a good school and maybe it won’t. I am sick of the idea that being wealthy is risky. No. There is a huge safety net that whenever you fail will catch you and catch you and catch you. Being poor is what is risky. We have to create a safety net for poor people. And when we won’t, because they happen to look different from us, it is the pervasive ugliness”

Harris-Perry later apologized for getting hot under the collar -- but not, thankfully, for her argument. This is 100%, inarguably, absolutely true -- which is why the conservatives on the panel barely even tried to dispute it. Instead, they went straight to clarification mode.

Donald Trump has filed for bankruptcy over and over, yet he remains ungodly rich. The fact of the matter is that it's very, very difficult to stop being rich in America. The idea that a business venture can fall through and leave you penniless seems as antiquated as handlebar mustaches and bicycles with giant front wheels.

But consider the logic; even if it were absolutely true that the rich took real risks, what would they be in risk of? Death? No, poverty. By conservative arguments, being poor is such an unimaginably horrible circumstance that the wealthy have to be protected from that possibility at every turn -- even if their own decisions (i.e., "risk-taking") are what brings them there. But those who are already poor -- well, that's their own damned fault for making bad decisions. Sink or swim buddy; this is the Land of Opportunity, not the Free Ride Terminal.

To be a conservative means to be unfettered by the bonds of logic and to be free from the chore of thinking things all the freakin' way through.

News Roundup for 12/7/11

Rick keeps his girlish figure by pummeling poor people

-Headline of the Day-
"Santorum: We Don’t Need Food Stamps Because Obesity Rates Are So High."

Good news, everyone; Rick Santorum has noticed that the problem of hunger in America has gone away!

Where'd it go? Who knows. But he doesn't see any hunger around anywhere. See, Rick's -- oh, let's go ahead and call it "reasoning" -- works this way: we've got a lot of people on food stamps and there are overweight people. The end. So it's safe to cut funding for food stamps.

"If hunger is a problem in America, then why do we have an obesity problem among the people who we say have a hunger program?" Rick asks.

Fair question, fair question... I'm sorry, no it's not. It's a stupid question. Not everyone receiving food stamps is overweight, for one. For another, being overweight doesn't mean you're eating right. Need me to draw you picture? Here you go:



Rick probably doesn't know it, being a fabulously well-to-do former Senator, but cheap food is shitty food. And shitty food makes you gain weight. People don't have a weight problem because they're eating too healthy, you know. It's mostly because they eat junk. I always say that if all you can afford for dinner is a 99 cent mac and cheese dinner and a can of Orange Faygo, you're going to put on weight. It's almost unavoidable.

But that's what you call yer "facts and logic."

Rick Santorum doesn't do facts and logic. (ThinkProgress)


-Things ain't looking good for Mittens-


Click for full comic

They probably have Sandusky confused with Herman Cain. (GoComics)


-Bonus HotD-
"Bolling Apologizes To 'Froggy,' Challenges Him To Debate."

Remember how Fox idiot Eric Bolling accused the muppets of being commies? Now he wants to debate Kermit. Kermit is a puppet. He isn't real. Apparently, some people haven't figured that out.

And, no. He didn't really apologize.

Proof positive Fox is the channel for complete morons. (Media Matters)

Griper Blade: Welfare Reform's Failure

In 1996, Bill Clinton signed a bill ending Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and replaced it with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). "Today, we are ending welfare as we know it," Clinton said. "But I hope this day will be remembered not for what it ended, but for what it began."

What this began was a change in the way the United States looked at welfare and the poor. Recipients were capped at five years in the program. After that, you couldn't collect anymore benefits, no matter what your situation. There was a "welfare to work" requirement, which put people into job training programs -- regardless of what education they already had. TANF would be funded through block grants, which states would administer and spend as they saw fit.

What had happened was that Clinton caved to pressure created by decades of Republican propaganda. Welfare recipients were lazy, Republicans said, they had kids just to get benefits, they made a lifestyle of AFDC. When it came to slinging BS about welfare and the poor, then-presidential candidate Ronald Reagan set the standard in his stump speech:

There’s a woman in Chicago. She has 80 names, 30 addresses, 12 Social Security cards and is collecting veterans benefits on four nonexisting deceased husbands. And she’s collecting Social Security on her cards. She’s got Medicaid, getting food stamps and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income alone is over $150,000.

Reagan called this woman a "welfare queen" and claimed she -- along with many like her -- were draining America's resources at public expense. Of course, it wasn't true. There was no woman in Chicago. It was all lies... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]

Griper Blade: Bush on Compassion

Reading the news paper can often be a jarring experience. You can read one story, then move on and find other stories that completely contradict it. At least, this has been my experience for the last six or seven years. The Bush administration has a very bad habit of saying one thing, while doing the exact opposite. Orwell's Newspeak slogans "War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength" would seem right at home in the White House press room, where contradiction is embraced with a big bear hug.

So, it wasn't really surprising to see Bush practicing his own brand of cognitive dissonance on the occasion of the King Holiday.

Associated Press:

President Bush today hailed Martin Luther King Jr. as a towering figure and called on the country to honor his legacy by showing compassion to those in need.

"It's fitting that we honor his service and his courage and his vision," Bush said during a visit to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library with first lady Laura Bush.

His comments came on the federal holiday honoring the birthday of King, who would have been 79 on Jan. 15. An advocate of peaceful resistance and equality for people of all races, King was assassinated in April 1968.

The entire speech is here.

Yeah, I know -- you're thinking Iraq. So was I. Not a lot of compassion is wasted on those people over there. But all I had to do was turn the page and a couple of stories undercut Bush's message of "compassion" a lot closer to home...

[CLICK TO READ FULL POST]