The Republican Poverty Plan


It's been a while since I talked to conservatives and I never listen to the likes of Rush Limbaugh, so I haven't heard anything as baldly stated as this lately. I used to hear it in Thomasville, NC from some people, including my husband's family. They used to talk about “Jigaboos,” “welfare queens,” and “bums.” They also talked about the conniving and dishonest nature of Jews. Interestingly, they were not rich, but barely making it financially. Bum was the word at that time for the homeless, who were present even in those days. It was believed that they just didn't want to work.

There are more homeless people now, of course due to the deinstitutionalisation of mental patients. Both political parties have been involved in the deinstitutionalization movement, and the goal was to substitute outpatient care for permanent hospitalization. It was good for many patients, but disastrous for those who simply can't cope alone, and won't or can't remember to take their medicine. For those people, it's like putting an Alzheimer's patient out on the street to care for himself.

Too many whites, rich and poor, have to look down on other people to feel okay about themselves, so they foster these images of poverty and the inferiority of other races and religious groups. The following statement says it all: “Payne, who has a long history of suggesting that the poor live in comfort, that our social safety net keeps people in poverty, and that there needs to be more 'stigma' surrounding food stamps, represents the conservative id surrounding the issue of poverty.”




http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/07/30/mock-the-poor-the-conservative-media-solution-t/195125

Mock The Poor -- The Conservative Media Solution To Poverty
Blog ›››  ››› ARI RABIN-HAVT
July 30, 2013 7:21 AM EDT

As fast food workers in 7 cities walked the picket line fighting for better wages and working conditions the conservative media turned its focus towards a solution to help lift up our working men and women out of poverty -- mock them.

To respond to the day long strike, Fox trotted out Richard Berman, failing to identify him as a highly paid consultant to the food and beverage industry. He proceeded to threaten fast food workers, claiming if they demanded incomes allowing them to live above the poverty line, the only solution would be to replace them with iPads.

On Your World with Neil Cavuto, Fox Business's Charles Payne claimed that the striking workers' demand for a living wage was akin to rewarding "mediocrity."

From an air conditioned studio in Rockefeller Center, the handsomely compensated Fox contributor asserted that a wage of $15 per hour earned spending countless hours on your feet without a break, in front of a hot stove, serving hundreds of customers, would be "cursing" those workers, ridding them of the impetus to "get better," "go to college," or "improve" their lot in life.

At the luxurious wage of $15 per hour minimum wage workers would spend their days "play[ing] video games" and "hav[ing] large families."

Payne, who has a long history of suggesting that the poor live in comfort, that our social safety net keeps people in poverty, and that there needs to be more "stigma" surrounding food stamps, represents the conservative id surrounding the issue of poverty.

While 4 in 5 Americans will "struggle with joblessness, near poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives," the right believes the solution to all of their problems is scorn.