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Republicans Out of Touch as Middle Class Sinks
American politics is a hoot! Where else can raw ignorance rise to such high places — and then flaunt itself shamelessly for all to see?
For example, who needs Jay Leno or Conan O'Brien for comic relief, when we've got Andre Bauer? He's the Lieutenant governor of South Carolina (a state, by the way, that really is a comer on the political comedy circuit — especially after Gov. Mark Sanford's madcap schtick last year involving his disappearance, the Appalachian Trail and an Argentine mistress.
But Sanford is leaving office, and Bauer, who is now a Republican contender for governor, is the state's new star joker. He had 'em rolling in the aisles recently when he did a wild, slapstick routine on food stamps at a town hall meeting. Andre proclaimed that much of his political thinking was shaped by his grandmother and that he had learned a valuable lesson from her.
"She told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why?" he asked, pausing for comedic effect. "Because they breed! You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce."
I tell you, Andre Bauer is an absolute scream!
But here's the real punch line: The need for food stamps has been soaring as more and more Americans are falling out of the middle class into poverty. From 2000 to 2008, 5 million more were added to the poverty rolls, and that was before the economic collapse of the last two years. In fact, check this out Andre, and laugh if you feel like it: About 6 million Americans today are living entirely on food stamps — they've lost their jobs and have no other income. That's one out of every 50 of us, and their numbers are growing rapidly. Now, isn't that a hoot?
Well, one who's not laughing is Republican member of Congress John Linder. This far-out Georgia right-winger is irked that America's food stamp program will grow to more than $60 billion this year. "This is craziness," Linder barked to a New York Times reporter.
"We're at risk of creating an entire class, a subset of people, just comfortable getting by living off the government."Comfortable? When was the last time this pampered lawmaker experienced the "comforts" of the food stamp life? Linder himself has been "living off the government" for 18 years, but at the high end — drawing $174,000 a year in pay, plus subsidized health care, a fat pension and generous perks of office.
Hypocrisy aside, Linder is an anti-government, laissez-faire extremist who buys into Bauer's fantasies about lazy, good-for-nothing strays getting food stamps.
"You don't improve the economy by paying people to sit around and not work," he grumps, adding, "You improve the economy by lowering taxes."
Really? Perhaps the gentleman from Georgia has forgotten that he and the whole Washington insider crowd tried that scam again and again throughout the past decade, slashing all sorts of taxes for corporations and the wealthy. Since Linder is a multimillionaire, that economic "plan" undoubtedly worked out splendidly for him.
For the middle class, however, the 10 years since January 2000 are known as "the lost decade." In that period, the U.S. economy lost more jobs than it created — zero job growth. That's the first decade since the end of the Depression that our country has had less than a 20 percent rise in job creation.
Also, after the 10-year frenzy of tax-cutting, middle-class families are earning less today, in real dollars, than they did in 1999. Add in skyrocketing health care costs and the plummeting value of people's homes, and we get the harsh reality of mushrooming poverty.
So that "subset of people" on food stamps whom Linder so callously denigrates are his own spawn! The food stamp program has had to grow because the tinkle-down economy that he pushed has wrecked America's middle class.
Does knocking poor people make these guys feel better about themselves? How pathetic. Bauer and Linder are living proof that when it comes to leadership, America has too many 5-watt bulbs screwed into 150-watt sockets.
62 Comments so far
Show AllHere come the 80s again. There's a whole new generation to hose. For folks who missed it, the economic policy of the 80s was a huge transfer of wealth from the many to the few. We had Volcker at the head of the Fed and Obama's hero Reagan at the helm. Many of the same quacks populating the airwaves were around with their Milton Freeman monetary policies. The most significant difference that comes to mind is that the mortgage-backed fraudulent loan racket hadn't been invented yet.
Back then, in our recession, Sonny, family farms were being industrialized. Businesses were being lost, and the move to China was just starting. "Our" Fed was going to third world countries and telling their governments to squeeze more out of the working class so the banks could still deal in their bonds. Oh, and we had the banking swindle known as the S&L crisis.
Some called it voodoo economics. Some called it trickle down. After the carnage on the middle and working classes, Clinton was elected and the austerity program was called "tightening our belts." We did. We paid more taxes and got less government services. We paid for their party. We were told (just as we were told when SS taxes were raised to create a surplus for the boomers) that it was a onetime deal, that responsibility was restored to the political and economic system. Now they're back and it's a redux. Tighten your belts.
$&L stands for Savings + Loan and was the second Raygun/Bushwhacking profit-taking from US (post NixOn oil aftershock)! Butt, with more on the way, better tighten Your SPHINCTERS, instead!!
Good summary of the Reaganaut '80s. But it's Milton Friedman, not Freeman. And the best critique of that fool's ideas can be found in Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine." Friedman probably is more responsible for the havoc and chaos all over the WORLD than any other single individual. It's an absolute nightmare what that asshole was able to get away with, including of course a Nobel Prize in economics. It fits perfectly with Obama's recent one for "peace".
Wrecking whole countries' economies for the sake of the wealthiest 1% will get you the Nobel, just as waging illegal wars and spending the nation into bankruptcy preparing for perpetual war will get you another. The Friedmaniacs are still out there shaping policy, writing laws to protect corporate power, impoverishing millions and killing cultures. Obama likes them all. He's one of them. And now he's running around the country giving speeches on how he's creating JOBS. Now all he pretends to care about is jobs, so Dems can be reelected in November, then go right back to promoting full-bore Republican policies. If they manage to get official unemployment down even 1% (the real rate is around 20%, not the official 10%) they'll probably keep their majorities. Then they can get back to the real business of the Democrats--satisfying corporate CEOs and their accountants.
Thanks for the correction. It's important to get the names right or google doesn't work.
Tried "milton freeman" in Bing and lo and behold, first pick was the Wikipedia article on Milton Friedman. I like Bing. It seems Microsoft finally got something right besides the X-Box.
Gary
"It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young."
-- Konrad Lorenz
Too bad this fact, the Bush error greatly hastened the extinction of the American middle class, is not a more prominent facet of discussion on corporate media. Wonder why? (This is a rhetorical question)
What they give us instead is "Undercover Boss". Feel good crap tv to make us believe the CEO is really like us, except when he lays off 10% of the companies employees and rakes in record year end bonuses and stock options.
I believe that's REPUBILKANS!
You mean REPUBLIKANTS ;+)
-"Also, after the 10-year frenzy of tax-cutting, middle-class families are earning less today, in real dollars, than they did in 1999."
It's too bad the Democrat's heroic filibuster to stop the "frenzy" failed isn't it?!!!! ;)
...What with the Republicans having a "super majority"!!!!HA! ;)
Don't remember it? Neither do I.
Private investment seeks to maximize profit. In order to realize this, investment must favor financial operations over real production because production involves irreducible production costs. Investing in finance produces a hierarchy of middle men who consume from real production, but produce nothing ... just like the hated bureaucrats! Government investment is more productive than private investment, so the logical use for private investment is to supplement government investment. In order for this priority to obtain, government must tax non-wage incomes at significantly high rates in order to provide incentives to productive investments with tax breaks. Low tax rates will leave non-productive and dangerous financial schemes as the greater attraction for private investors. Financial operations should be highly taxed in any case because they are all nothing other than distributors of a necessarily state-controlled monopoly product: currency.
The way out of America's financial impasse is to close the Federal Reserve and restore the Bank of the United States, the regular retail bank run from the Treasury Department. There will be no need to nationalize retail banking and debt to protect the currency with the revival of the Bank of the US because the public would prefer to bank if it offers its potential for better services, lower fees, competitive rates of compounding interest, low interest rates for credit, and ideal financial security.
As far as I'm concerned, the Democrats are as feckless as the Republicans.
Yes, 99% of them are because they are really Republicans who ran on the Democratic ticket to get their political careers going. We can probably count on one hand the true Democrats in Washington.
Yes, this republican bashing leaves half the crooks behind a smoke screen. Kay and Truth, thanks for clearing the air.
With the exception of Rep. Dennis Kucinich, I would most certainly agree.
I learned from this article that the world would have been a better place if someone had quit feeding Andre Bauer's grandmother.
· Yr Obd't Servant
LOL! Love it!
When the unrich realize that they can agree to "earn" money in time instead of by labor, the revolution will have begun in earnest.
This article misses the point entirely. It's not that Republicants are out of touch, it's that they don't care one bit for the middle class, yet alone the "lower" class.
Their worldview is based on Hate and Original Sin (i.e. people are naturally bad). Given that, their stance towards the not-upper-classes makes sense.
It's also the old game of Blame the Victim. In a "free market" system if they were worthy they wouldn't be on food-stamps in the first place.
Well I was one of those victims, living on food-stamps for two years while my disability case wound its way through all the red tape and rejections.
It sucked big-time. I had no money except for some handouts from friends and neighbors to buy what food-stamps wouldn't -- like toilet paper and such. And fuel for my little kerosene stove that was my only heat source.
Made a "camp stove" out of an old pan and parts from a gas stove. Burned solid vegetable shortening as the fuel, it gives a nice clean flame once started. Built a dutch-oven out of another old pan and some earthenware. Cooked a mean biscuit.
And I hardly was in the situation for anyone to do any "breeding" with me. What could I offer but misery?
Gary
“Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.”
== Bertrand Russell
60 billion so that hungry people can eat! "this is craziness" Linder. I guess according to Mr. Linder, $780,000,000,000 to kill people, so they do not have to be fed is his version of sanity!
Despite the neon savagery and rottenness of the Republicans, millions of middle class Americans will continue voting for them. Scores of thousands of them will drop out of the middle class and still continue voting for them. The middle class can be completely destroyed and reduced to serfdom and millions will still vote Republican.
Ditto for the Democrats.
Because people will always prefer to face the possibility of becoming rich, rather than the reality of being poor.
And that is why they will follow them! To the RIGHT! EVER TO THE RIGHT!
Agreed.
Seriously - what do we expect the criminal 'elite' to say, that they've seen the light and that everything they've ever believed in was wrong and we're sorry and here's your money back?
Goldman Sach CEO Blanfein says he believes he's doing "God's work" for f**k's sake. Rigging, then collapsing, the world economy for his own personal gain = God's work, for which he 'earns' over $100M/year.
As George Costanza once said, "It's not a lie if you believe it." And believing their own lies and delusions is the only way they can live with themselves...
frank, great to see your astute observations again.
To paraphrase one reader today, the fingers on one had would more than cover those in DC worth a schitt....but I can name only one, Dennis Kucinich. Would that there were more like him, Jim Hightower and Molly Ivins. Those three would likely agree with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann who said, and I roughly paraphrase, "There is little if any difference in the two political parties, it's just one party, The Money Party, and its symbol is the vulture!"
Hightower's article is as succinct as the late Molly Ivins, as he puts to words what the reader's comments of today reveal.
Thanks to all readers and their comments....I learn from you as much as I do from the well known authors.
The Republicans have always been the party of NO against the Middle Class. When anything goes wrong, all they have to do is repeat tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts as the panacea. Last year, President Obama passed a stimulus package which include public spending despite the Republicans and the Blue Dog Democrats watering it down some to more tax cuts and less spending. Republicans think that they can dope you the people into believing that "it's the people's money" bs. They don't want to allocate money for domestic spending but shift all spending to war. In 2008, the Republicans found themselves preparing to embrace defeat so they tried to pretend that they were pro Middle Class by saying no to TARP and auto bailouts. If they knew at that time that they would keep their power, they would have voted yes to TARP and auto bailouts. Power breeds contempt for the middle class and I'm sorry to admit that plenty of Democrats are falling for this.
-"The Republicans have always been the party of NO against the Middle Class. When anything goes wrong, all they have to do is repeat tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts as the panacea"
-"Last year, President Obama passed a stimulus package which include public spending despite the Republicans and the Blue Dog Democrats watering it down some to more tax cuts and less spending. "
Hi there Shawn, so again, your choices are "tax cuts"...or...something "watered down to more tax cuts"?
Can you see why I have trouble understanding your position?
Yes but seriously, could we have expected anything different out of Geitner, Sommers, and Berneke?
My heart sank to the floor when I heard about those appointments...and they behaved exactly as I expected.
So much for Hope.
I'm not sure about the three you mention, but we couldn't have expected anything else from Geithner, Summers and Bernanke.
Sioux Rose
EPHRAIM: Glad these tough times have not diminished your sense of humor. Well done.
I believe proper blog-politeness would now require that I start a flame war.
There are a few fruit and nut cases who will give reactionary responses to something they don't like or simply disagree with and start a flame war from there. Their motto is "I'm polite except when I feel that I should defend myself". Usually most people are nice around here and will be glad to debate and discuss in a civil tone even if they don't agree with you. It's ok if you voted for Obama and are still not comfortable joining a third party yet. I have gone through some great discussions to work it out sort of. I think the progressives are divided on practical vs ideal. On some sites, the majority of the progressives will take practical over ideal but some sites such as this one do it the other way around. Still, diversity of opinion is welcome here so I wouldn't worry about a few fruit and nut cases. Welcome aboard or welcome back.
Peace
I was saying that Republicans want tax cuts for everything and for Obama's stimulus plan, they and the Blue Dog Democrats watered down domestic spending which was the real stimulus and increased the tax cuts even though tax cuts don't stimulate economies. Sorry about the confusion. I wished it could have been kept to domestic spending and no tax cuts. Another stimulus round should be on the way to give us some more domestic spending. Last year's wasn't as much as it should have been but the high speed railing and other programs should be getting some funding for help.
Well, we need to remember the middle class got that big $300 tax refund from GWB....
And I was so grateful for it too! I got one despite having lived in the UK for a decade and paid no US taxes for that same period.
Just to be helpful I used it to pay off credit card debt just so it wouldn't over-heat the economy.
My price is much higher than $300.
I will never sell my belief in Democracy for a meger $300.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Generations living today may be driven to eat the rich in the not too distant future and the rich might not be too bad in a stir-fry with a little Texas Pete and peanut sauce.
Let's face it, for every goofy Republican, there is a goofy Democrat. Neither political party works for the middle class,and neither has for a long time now.
Jimmytwoshoes,
Well said.
Republicans, Democrates. You ever heard of "good cop, bad cop"?
The Republicans aren't "out of touch." They know exactly who they care about pleasing, and it ain't the middle class. Until election day, that is, at which point they'll drag out that old canard (you know the one: there's a socialist, abortion-lovin', gay marriage-supportin' librul hidin' in yer closet) to scare ignoramuses into participating in their own subjugation. Again.
Bulletin to Mr. Hightower: the Ds control the WH, and both houses of Congress by large margins. Bush Jr. and Cheney are no longer in power, oh wait a minute....are they?
The only reason I know they aren't in power is the completely rabid, factless rantings of some of my former high-school classmates on facebook.
Apparently, Hitler is in charge and we have socialism and fascism all at the same time.
Oh and by the way, we need the Patriot Act to keep us safe.
Other than that, I'd have no idea anything has changed at all.
South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer is quoted as saying:
"Because they breed! You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce."
I'll bet he also opposes sex education, birth control and abortion.
Also, it's worth observing that a large proportion of food stamp recipients are fixed-income elderly hardly up to "breeding." Quite the contrary, they probably have a moderating influence on their wildly lustful progeny!
There's nothing like a politician who appeals to our worst instincts as a strategy for improving our world.
-30-
But surely he supports the death penalty....
except for the unborn.
The discussion here reminds me of Rahm Emmanual's label for the Progressive left that will not support Obama's moves on health care... It's quite the show of how this gang views progressives.. "F.... retards".. He said this months ago. August of last year. CAlled on it by Sarah Palin on her blog... not the progressive media... he apologized... Not to the progressive left.. that still stands I guess. To the mentally challenged community he has said he is sorry.
Shows how this guys thought processes really spin. Pure relativism one could say. Perhaps I will.
It wasn't too long ago the middle class were crying about having to pay tax for welfare and food stamps for the inner city black folks. It was the biggest reason they moved from voting democratic to voting republican. Now that they are in the same boat, what do we hear?
Time to educate the Working Classes, who were the base of the Democratic party. It was Bill, aka, Slick Willie Clinton who under the tutelage of George H W Bush gave us Globalization.
It was with the help of Dodd, Lieberman, Kerry, Kennedy who all voted for Nafta, while Ross Perot was warning us that the deal would end up outsourcing our industrial base to China and Mexico. Since it was the Democrats who destroyed our Manufacturing Process, and in turn ruined the working classes,why should we vote for these re-cyling life time career politicians in the Democratic party who doublecrossed us and are now trying to blame the Republicans? Where Is Move-on and the Progressive movement? When will they take a stand and tell us how much money Bill aka Bubba Clinton is making today?
Obomber is simply an extension of Bush and Clinton.
Who will tell the people?