Jim Hightower : Republican Hypocrites Rag on the Poor

Image from Grub Street.

Madcap schtick of Bauer and Linder:
Republicans out of touch as middle class sinks

By Jim Hightower / February 4, 2010

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?

Georgia Congressman John Linder: irked about food stamps.

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.

Copyright 2010 Creators.com.

Source / truthout

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8 Responses to Jim Hightower : Republican Hypocrites Rag on the Poor

  1. This is the same good ol boy Jim who predicted that:
    1) Sarah Palin was just a fad for 2008
    2)that Acorns only “crime” was helping out the poor
    3)and that there was no such thing as populism that didnt seek to constrain corporate power.

    At least Jim is consistent about being wrong.
    1) The fad of 2008 was “Hope and Change”. Sarah Palin is now as popular as Obama;
    2) Acorn’s crimes include voter fraud convictions and a willingness to help those who want to prey on the poor in their own communities, especially poor women.
    3) The Tea Parties are outlets for populist anger seeking to constrain the power of governement and empower capitalism. Jim might want to read a history of the American Revoultion to see just how powerful that sort of populism can be

    He of course is just as wrong in this article. There are nut jobs on both sides. He gleefully points out some of the ones with (R) after their name but somehow omits the progressive nutjobs. Such as all those who predicted that the tea parties would explode in brown shirted violence (have ya seen any tea party violence??), and that all of us that express outrage at the president’s policies are simply closet racists. Hey Jim, how about those Progressive nutjobs whose hair catches on fire whenever someone like me points out that the Climate Change movement is to 2010 what Snake Oil was to the 1850’s.

    To paraphrase the always witty author, “Does knocking conservatve people make you guys feel better about yourselves? How pathetic.”

  2. Brother Jonah says:

    Well, when you lose YOUR job due to Corporate Malfeasance, in spite of and not because of, ACORN and the other Unions which organize the Real Workers…
    the Real Underpinnings of the American Economy, so that we can collectively bargain for a real Wage, one that actually covers our costs of producing our labor.

    On the other side, we have the proponents of killing Americans to force us to accept their political doctrine, like the Racist Retards who show up to your Tea Parties carrying the Confederate slave flag and fully loaded Automatic weapons, who are they going to shoot, in America?

    Sounds to me like anti-American Terrorism.

    Since Silly Sarah hasn’t spoken out against THAT anti-American Terrorism, I guess she really is a Fellow Traveler for the Right Wing Lunatics who still insist that Slavery equals States Rights.

    Look beyond our borders to see what the Corporate Masters have done to the world economy. The nations that are starving, guess which Corporations run the economies of their countries? Nestle runs Ethiopia and Eritrea and Chad, for instance. hmmm… I see a pattern there. Now they want to run America with the same “free” hand they do other nations…

    Is that what your Tea Party wants, freedom only for the Rich? And the Minimum wage workers just have to humbly obey? No allegations have been proven against ACORN the organization. Individual members maybe. But then, Individual Members of the Army have been found guilty of war crimes. The Right Wing Reactionaries say that doesn’t mean the war or the army are corrupt.

    Guess a little ol’ Corporate Hubris is at work…

    You know how the Right Wing Whackadoodles say “call us when we behead somebody”
    They don’t mean it, if you mention that a couple of .50 cal rounds fired from a Vulcan (gatling gun) takes somebody’s head off just as sure as a sword does, they strangely don’t want to hear about it. Call me when ACORN comes around to political meetings trying to intimidate anybody into not speaking back, under threat of machine-gun fire.

    Your job might be on the block next, and the Corporate Big-Pigs who own the company and apparently, own you, ain’t gonna do a damn thing for you. They’ll get another loudmouth supporter to denounce YOU the way you do US.

    Ol’ Momma Karma can be a Mean Bitch…

  3. brotherjonah says:

    Oh, and the Right Wing Racist violence already has happened, your Retards lynched the President in effigy, but say there’s no way such saintly individuals would go ahead and Lynch somebody in actuality. Like they did Bill Sparkman. The Kentucky Kop Klan said it’s a suicide, but then, the PIGS always say that. Their Marine Corps comrades said the same thing about three inmates at Guantanamo who were tortured to death.

    Then there’s Brisen(that should be an accented n)a Flores, the American Child who your fellow travellers the Minutemen murdered in her home. Again, the Right Wing “leaders” like Beck and Dobbs and Malkin and Silly Sarah deny that their inflammatory rhetoric set the stage for it.

    Scott Roeder murdered a man in Church, shot him in the back like the skulking Right Wing coward that he is, but again, the Iflammatory Lies told by Fox and Friends didn’t have anything to do with it.

    Adkisson shot up a church in Knoxville Tenn., or tried to. Your Right Wing Propagandists who wired him up to do it, then conveniently denied responsibility, had convinced him that all he would have to do is start shooting and the “weak” Liberals would grovel and beg him not to shoot them…

    One of the REAL men he shot stepped in front of his drum-fed automatic shotgun when he pointed it to the KIDS on stage. Y’all right wingers sho’ does love you some baby-killin’. Then he was wrestled to the floor by other Liberal “weaklings” and his gweat big scawy pop-gun taken away from him.

    Now he’s in jail, in protective custody to keep other prisoners from releasing his Inner Girl.
    Probably screaming “nigger nigger nigger” at the other prisoners, while the police protect him from any retaliation. Kind of like a monkey in the zoo throwing his poop.

    Of course, there’s no “evidence” linking your pattern of Hate Speech, other than his Shooter’s Manifesto.

    Which looked remarkably like your comments, oh Reactionary One, but then, we’re not supposed to notice stuff like that.

    Oh, and global warming goes on apace. I’m in the high Rockies, three days after the exact middle of Winter, and the temperature is above freezing, the trees are budding… but Climate Change is a myth.

    At least in Whackadoodle Land. By the way, there’s other places in the world beyond our borders, and neither the weather nor the climate stop at those borders. The once-predictable El Nino La Nina flow patterns of the Pacific and Indian oceans, no more pattern. The water has already been warmed that much.

    But without proof that conserving resources rather than spending them wildly, accompanied by pollution, is somehow good for us, you keep coming at us with the notion that developing other non-destructive put-conserve-back-into-conservation is some kind of liberal plot. Got Tinfoil?

  4. Fed Up says:

    What a great aritcle!

    Apropos of the same vein of thought, while watching and adoring Patty Griffin on Soundstage tonight, I was pondering the connection I feel to her, and then my mind drifted into thinking about what the subject matter of someone like Ann Coulter’s songs would be…”I Hate Liberals” and “Oh, How I Love The Corporation”. “Pakistanis Are Dirty” might be one of their songs; and then, of course, “No Taxes On Me” would be a lovely little ditty. Oh, and don’t forget, “Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran”. And of course, Dennis Miller could write an ode “Don’t let facts stop you from doing what is right”.

    But I think its hilarious how people like DHS have no earthly idea what they are getting themselves into: for instance, has Mr. DHS ever contemplated what those 37 Million Americans on food stamps will do if they actually get hungry? http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/rails/timeline/index.html

    Why, they just might have food riots, just like in the good old days back when things were supposedly so great according to these numnut Teabaggers — you know, before the New Deal — or worse yet, hungry people will seize land and grow crops, or build shanty towns in your lovely neighborhood, or worse yet, they will rob the very Bejesus out of people like DHS.

    And the workers? Well, hell, we will strike your ass off. DHS, miseducated, doesn’t even know that after the Civil War, the workers of St. Louis had a little insurrection and took the place over, and had to be put down by federal troops. http://www.answers.com/topic/insurrections-domestic

    People like DHS evidently think it would be just great to work 12 or 15 hours a day and not be able to eat or feed your kids with your pay…while you watch the employers you make rich with your labor live in splendor.

    Welcome to the REAL world, football watcher!

    In the real world, this is what the hell you are fighting for, every day, Tea Bagger, massive, unbelievable social instability, and right at a time when that is just what America needs, eh?

  5. Richard says:

    DHS,
    “There are nut jobs on both sides.”

    Thank youfor that. Could you describe some of the nut jobs on your side and tell us why they are wrong?

  6. Anonymous says:

    Right or left watch out for Goldman-Sachs. They are an economic para-military, and no one knows who they are trying to subdue.
    mps

  7. Hi Richard,

    Birthers are Nutjobs with a capital N. Conspiracies are fun to mull over, sort of like crosswords, but give it up already, the man was born in HI.

    All white basketball league proponents are nutjobs. I support anyone who plunks down their money to start up a business, but please don’t pretend that if your involved in something like that its not about racism. (Note to Progressives, calling everyone who goes to a tea party event or rally a racist is kind of like that boy who cried wolf for no good reason. You have lied so much about the race issue (because its good politics for you), that I suspect most folks in middle America just tune you out when you cry “racist”. I know I do)

    People who think BHO is a Muslin are nutjobs. He isn’t. He really doesn’t seem to care much for religion of any stripe.

    People who email outrageous claims about BHO without spending 2 minutes to determine that the claim is a lie, encourage nutjobs. They irritate me a LOT. I am constantly harassing people who email incorrect information. BHO does enough idiotic things that are a matter of record, no one needs to make stuff up.

  8. Nutjob Update:
    After listening to the clip of Debra Medina being asked about her “9/11 truther” views on Glen Beck’s show, I must now add anyone who thinks the US government was involved in the 9/11 bombings is a nutjob … including tea party candidates.

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