In the NYT, historian Timothy Egan notes Paul Ryan’s rhetorical debt to those who helped perpetrate the Great Hunger in Ireland. “You never hear Ryan make character judgments about generations of wealthy who live off their inheritance, or farmers who get paid not to grow anything…Dependency is all one-way. ‘The whole British argument in the famine was that the poor are poor because of a character defect,’ said Christine Kinealy, a professor of Irish studies and director of Ireland’s Great Hunger Institute at Quinnipiac University. ‘It’s a dangerous, meanspirited and tired argument.'”
Tag: War on the Poor
Ryan: Still Clownshoes.
The above pic of the learned statesman in question via Mansplaining Paul Ryan dot tumblr dot com. Also, I see Jonathan Chait has already gone there, but this is the obvious movie reference here:
With Friends Like These.
In Salon, former USDA official Joel Berg reads the riot act to lazy journalists and spineless Dems over the soon-to-pass Farm Bill, which cuts Food Stamps for the poor while expanding crop insurance subsidies for wealthy farms. “It infuriates me, that we live in a country with tens of thousands of actual loopholes that benefit the ultra-rich, [whereas] this is a provision authorized by law, perfectly legal, perfectly sensible, that governors of both parties have utilized…[Calling Food Stamp cuts “closing a loophole” is] basically a fabricated excuse. And it’s a smokescreen to obfuscate the fact that they’re taking food away from hungry families.”
Berg goes on: “George W. Bush proposed a billion dollars in cuts to SNAP, and virtually all these people were aghast at how horrible it is. For them to then turn around and justify cuts that are [eight] times as large as what George W. Bush proposed is a little hard to swallow. I do think our political system is basically evil versus spineless now.”
This. It’s the same dynamic you see on the NSA, on the Grand Bargain, and on countless other issues. And this is why I hard to find it to take so many Dems seriously anymore. Here’s the bill passage pablum from Senate Ag Chair Debbie Stabenow: “Congress is on the verge of taking bipartisan action that will create jobs and help reduce the deficit. This is not your father’s Farm Bill. It implements major reforms and ends unnecessary subsidies…Congress can pass a bipartisan bill that helps take us into the future and beyond the policies of the past.” And here’s the missing subtext: “Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) has received more contributions from the crop production industry than any other senator.”
Ain’t no use jiving, ain’t no use joking. Everything is broken, and we need to stop enabling it or it will never, ever get better.
Robbing Peter to Pay DePaul.
Yet another exhibit in the general brokenness of today’s Democratic Party [See also: RepubliDems, Dems without Spines]: By way of Quiddity, Chicago mayor, former Obama consigliere, and one of the Village’s favorite High Democratic muckety-mucks Rahm Emanuel — who apparently was pulling a 19% approval rating in February — tries to offset school and health center closings in his city with a giant new arena for a sub-par basketball team. (Apologies in advance for the unwieldy, shoehorned-in Angry Birds analogy in the Nation piece.)
“The only explanation for this is that Rahm is scratching someone’s back in the DePaul Catholic hierarchy of Chicago…In this case, the hottest rumor is that approval of legalized gambling is on the horizon and the convention center’s locale will be its epicenter. The arena is, in effect, a Trojan Horse for a casino.”
As I’ve said several times before about this sort of shameful behavior — and Rahm is a frequent offender in this regard — if we Democrats are just going to act like Republicans, voters might as well pull the lever for the real thing.
Offset Pt. II.
With the first round of Operation Offset on its way to becoming law, Dubya submits a $2.8 trillion budget that further reflects the egregiously screwed-up priorities of this administration. The proposed budget “would cut billions of dollars from domestic programs ranging from Medicare and food stamps to local law enforcement and disease control while extending most of his tax cuts beyond their 2010 expiration date… [these] tax cuts, tax incentives and tax-cut extensions would cost the Treasury $1.7 trillion over the next decade, dwarfing the $172 billion in entitlement savings and proposed user fees in the budget.” Why didn’t anyone think of this before? Conducting war is so much easier when only the poorest Americans have to sacrifice. And as for the exploding deficits? Hoo boy. For an administration that purportedly cares about the unborn, this White House seems to have no qualms about foisting debt on the next generation.
That’ll teach the poor.
Operation Offsetted: By the slimmest of margins (216-214), the House GOP pass the “deficit-cutting” (read: millionaire tax-giveaway off-setting) bill striking $40 billion from “Medicaid, welfare, child support and student lending.” (It previously passed the Senate on Cheney’s vote.) I’m reminded of a quote by Walter Lippmann on the Goldwater ’64 campaign: “We all know of demagogues and agitators who arouse the poor against the rich. But in Barry Goldwater we have a demagogue who dreams of arousing the rich against the poor.“
ANWR’s Nine Lives.
“The legislation would allow states to impose new fees on Medicaid recipients, cut federal child support enforcement funds, impose new work requirements on state welfare programs and squeeze student lenders.” Although a tie-breaking vote by Cheney got the deficit bill passed — meaning people on Medicaid, welfare recipients, and students with loans will soon be paying for Dubya’s millionaire tax breaks — the Dems do succeed in beating back ANWR drilling, much to the chagrin of Ted Stevens, who gambled that the Senate wouldn’t vote down a defense bill.
Ice Station Dubya.
Off again, on again: Along with a smattering of Operation Offset-type cuts (particularly with regard to student loans), “Bridge to Nowhere” Ted Stevens and the GOP attach ANWR drilling to a fiscal defense bill, in effect daring the Dems to vote against supporting the troops. Is this ANWR’s last stand? Update: Senate Dems ready for a fight.
The Eye of the Needle.
“They are trading the lives of poor people for their agenda. They’re being, and this is the worst insult, unbiblical.” As liberal Christian groups protest GOP cuts in poverty programs, the Post looks into why the usual right-wing suspects are AWOL on the issue of poverty.
The Demise of Dubyanomics?
After some balking by GOP moderates — and a surprising defeat on a spending bill — yesterday, the House manages to pass their budget. Still, “Republicans salvaged the win this time only by jettisoning one of President Bush’s top domestic priorities, opening Alaska’s National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, then trimming planned cuts to food stamps, Medicaid and student lunch programs.” And, on the Senate side, GOP moderates not only joined Dems in preventing the renewal of Dubya’s capital gains and dividend tax cuts, but raised taxes on oil companies (which, of course, may prompt a Dubya veto.) Sure, there’s still a lot of lousy stuff in these bills, but it’s nice to see some of the central premises of Dubyanomics — soak-the-poor, cut the rich a break, a free ride for Big Oil — fall apart in a GOP-controlled Congress.