“The Right’s Ugly Food-Stamp Obsession Is Back!”: Why Lying Dog-Whistle Politics Returned
“Welcome to Obama’s America,” Fox’s Eric Bolling told his audience Tuesday – a dystopia where people now use food stamps to patronize “strip clubs, liquor stores, pot dispensaries.” Following up on its rubbishy August 2013 faux-exposé “The Great Food Stamp Binge,” Fox again profiled “surfing freeloader” Jason Greenslate, who is allegedly “livin’ large” in San Diego, thanks to the SNAP program, commonly known as food stamps. After Bill O’Reilly’s errand boy Jesse Watters caught up with Greenslate again Monday night, “The Five” used the lazy surfer as “the representative of literally millions of Americans,” in Bolling’s words. It was epic.
“He’s playing the system, he’s stretching the rules to their limits,” Bolling told Fox’s angry, fearful, mostly elderly viewers. “But what would you expect with a $105 billion program that’s almost tripled under Obamanomics? That’s what you would expect, right there, take a look at it. But what’s next? Strip clubs, liquor stores, pot dispensaries? Oh, that’s already going on, folks. Welcome to Obama’s America.”
Bolling’s rant came a day after Dick Cheney visited Fox and attacked Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s military cuts, telling Sean Hannity, bizarrely, that Obama “would much rather spend the money on food stamps than he would on a strong military or support for our troops.”
The right just can’t leave that old dog-whistle alone. It’s 2012 all over again – Newt Gingrich will be reviving his claim that Obama’s “the food stamp president” any minute now. In “Obama’s America,” the right is determined to make the president the tribune of a moocher-rewarding, ever-expanding welfare state, even if they have to lie to do so.
Of course in Obama’s America (and everyone else’s) SNAP regulations prohibit buying alcohol or tobacco with food stamps, let alone drugs, and they can’t be used at restaurants or bars, let alone strip clubs. But Bolling wants Fox viewers in a perpetual state of moral panic, and the notion that slackers like Greenslate are “livin’ large” – Fox’s term — on the public dime just works, the facts be damned.
Cheney’s rant was in some ways more offensive. Charging that the cuts proposed by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel are “really devastating,” Cheney went on: “It does enormous long-term damage to our military. They act as though it is like highway spending and you can turn it on and off. The fact of the matter is he is having a huge impact on the ability of future presidents to deal with future crises that are bound to arise.”
Of course, as Think Progress noted back when Cheney began lobbying against defense cuts in 2012, the former vice president himself presided over a 25 percent cut to the defense budget back when he was defense secretary under George H.W. Bush. The fighting force was reduced by 500,000 active-duty soldiers, a move that was blessed by Joint Chiefs of Staff chair Colin Powell.
That was then. These cuts are the work of Obama’s team. So not only must they be attacked as dangerous, they’ve got to be framed as something the corrupt Chicago “gangster” is doing to reward his coalition of slackers, moochers and lazy white surfers.
Now, maybe it’s progress that Fox is making a white surfer the poster boy for food stamp abuse – but it’s the link to “Obama’s America” that updates Reagan’s old imagery about Cadillac-driving welfare queens and “young bucks” using food stamps to buy “T-bone steaks.”
In fact only 1 percent of SNAP funds are wasted in fraud. Three-quarters of SNAP households include an elderly or disabled person or a child, and fully 42 percent of adult recipients are also working, but making too little to feed themselves and their families. Among the nation’s food stamp recipients are almost a million military veterans, who were slurred by Cheney, and thousands of active duty military too. Military families spent $100 million in food stamp funds at military grocery stores in 2013.
Fox and Cheney don’t want you to think about the veteran or the soldier or the single mother or the disabled senior on food stamps. They don’t want Fox viewers to ask why 42 percent of recipients make such low wages that they qualify for food assistance, or why so many veterans and even active-duty soldiers need help. To distract from an economy that’s increasingly hoarding rewards at the top, they point to a cartoonish moocher and blame Obama.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, February 26, 2014
“John Boehner’s Sunshine Band”: A Cartoon Festival Of Illusions That Would Embarrass Disney’s Brilliant Fantasists
From now on, it’s the Zip-a-dee-doo-dah House.
The political world stopped for a moment when Speaker John Boehner broke into the jaunty old Disney tune — “My, oh my, what a wonderful day” — after a news conference in which he threw in the towel on the debt ceiling fight. He found himself trapped between the immovable object of Democrats determined that they’d never again let Republicans take the nation’s credit hostage and the irresistible force of a dysfunctional, crisis-addicted GOP majority of which he is the putative leader. Boehner decided to skip away in song.
Feb. 11, 2014, was , in fact, a wonderful day. It marked the end of a dismal experiment that saw the right wing of the conservative movement do all it could to make the United States look like a country incapable of governing itself rationally. We were so caught up in our own nasty politics that we forgot that we’re supposed to be a model for how democracy should work. There will be other episodes of foolishness, but the debt-ceiling bomb finally has been defused.
Moreover, there were lessons here that should be applied from now on. The first is that refusing to negotiate over matters that should not be subject to negotiation is the sensible thing to do. President Obama learned this the hard way after the debilitating budget battle of 2011.
It’s true that both parties have played political games around the debt ceiling. But until our recent tea party turn, politicians kept these symbolic skirmishes within safe limits. The 28 House Republicans who faced reality by voting to move on for another year sent a signal that they want to return to those prudent habits.
But this means that 199 Republicans voted to go over the cliff. Or, to be more precise, many pretended they were willing to take that leap to appease big conservative funders and organizations, knowing that a minority of their GOP colleagues and the Democrats would bail them out. These profiles in convenience included Reps. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), chairman of the Budget Committee, and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), who chairs the House Republican Conference.
This tells us something important: The House Republican majority now governs largely through gestures and is driven almost entirely by internal party fractiousness and narrow political imperatives. When Boehner tried to tie the debt ceiling vote to a popular proposal to restore modest cuts to military pensions, Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) complained that he could not vote to raise the debt limit but also didn’t want to vote against the pension restoration.
It’s a perfect parable: Cotton, an Army veteran who is trying to unseat Sen. Mark Pryor, a Democrat, this fall, felt a need to placate pro-spending and anti-spending interest groups at the same time and didn’t want Boehner to call his bluff. No wonder the speaker gave up on mollifying his caucus and, bless him, offered his ironic melody about all the sunshine coming his way.
Something else happened on Tuesday: Fully 193 of the 195 Democrats voting were prepared to shoulder the burden of hiking the debt ceiling. This vote, like many before it, proved that there is a moderate governing majority in the House. It could work its will again and again if only Boehner were willing to put bills on the floor and give practical-minded Republicans a chance join with Democrats to enact them.
This proposition deserves a test on immigration reform. Supporters should be thinking about a discharge petition to force Boehner’s hand — or maybe even to allow him to do what he’s said privately he’d like to do. If a majority of House members signed it, there could be a successful vote for the immigration bill the Senate already passed.
The largest lesson is to those who make a living bemoaning Washington gridlock and demanding a return to old-fashioned, bipartisan, good-faith negotiations.
That would be very nice if we were dealing with the GOP of yesteryear. We’re not. The debt-ceiling vote confirms what has long been obvious: Getting to yes on anything begins with an acknowledgment of how many members of Boehner’s caucus are ready to blow up our governing process and how many others feign a desire to do so to avoid political pain from their right.
The Zip-a-dee-doo-dah House has become a cartoon festival of illusions that would embarrass Disney’s brilliant fantasists. Exposing the fantasies is the first step toward sunshine.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, February 12, 2014
“Always Pick Door Number 2”: The Lessons Of John Boehner’s Latest Failure
A last-ditch plan by House Republicans to extract concessions in exchange for hiking the nation’s borrowing limit fell apart Tuesday morning, with conservative holdouts leaving the party short of the necessary votes.
That the GOP caved isn’t as surprising as the speed with which it did, just a few minutes into a morning conference meeting. All along, it was clear Republicans had no leverage with their debt-ceiling threats; they’d caved before, and public opinion was firmly against more debt limit extortion.
Still, the GOP’s latest debt ceiling defeat is yet another sign of how difficult it has become for Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to move anything through his divided caucus. And Boehner’s inability to control his party is a real liability, as it’s given Democrats even less reason to concede ground in future negotiations — not only on the debt ceiling, but on other major issues as well.
Even after Republicans self immolated during last year’s debt ceiling negotiations by offering a fantastical hostage list, the party again wanted to extract some kind of concessions this time. But though the ask list was smaller, the party again couldn’t agree on a single plan, and a handful of proposals quickly collapsed. In a weird Bizarro World twist, the last idea — to restore pension benefits to some veterans — would have had Republicans either voting to raise spending, or voting against the military.
In the end, the potential damage to the GOP was so great that party leaders knew they had two options on the debt ceiling: Stand firm and destroy the party’s approval rating (again), or ask Democrats for help. Boehner gave the finger to the Tea Party and picked Door Number 2.
So now, Democrats and President Obama, who insisted throughout the ordeal that they would only support a clean debt ceiling vote, have watched the GOP cave once again. When Republicans return with more debt ceiling demands in the future, Democrats will surely be emboldened to shrug them off and say “nope” again, confident the demands are merely more empty threats.
But will Boehner keep bucking the right wing? Immigration offers a salient test case, with Boehner seemingly interested in passing some reforms, and conservative critics blasting any action as “amnesty.”
The fallout for Republicans from spiking immigration this year wouldn’t be as visceral as the damage from, say, the government shutdown. But it would give Democrats a huge talking point — “Republicans are anti-immigration” — and further impinge on the party’s ability to court minority voters.
In short, Boehner is, as he has been for some time, caught between his need to appease the right and his need to do his job. The latest debt ceiling brouhaha has only exposed how tricky that balancing act is, and shown Democrats that, with a little pressure, they can force him to dump the right and seek out their help.
By: Jon Terbush, The Week, February 11, 2014
“Five Times George W. Bush Extended Unemployment Insurance Benefits”: It’s Just Bad Policy To Refuse To Renew The Extension
In his December 14, 2002 weekly radio address, President George W. Bush reminded Congress that “no final bill was sent to me extending unemployment benefits for about 750,000 Americans whose benefits will expire on December 28th.”
He went on, “These Americans rely on their unemployment benefits to pay for the mortgage or rent, food, and other critical bills. They need our assistance in these difficult times, and we cannot let them down.”
What was the unemployment rate in December 2002?
It had just risen to 6.0 percent.
The unemployment rate today is 7.0 percent and at the end of this year 1.3 million Americans — including 20,000 veterans — who have been out of work for more than six months will have their unemployment insurance benefits cut off. Republicans in Congress have refused to extend these benefits, though the Congressional Budget Office predicts failing to do so will cost the economy 200,000 jobs.
The Republican Congress heeded George W. Bush’s call to extend unemployment insurance as they had the March before. They passed a bill and he signed it.
In 2003, the American economy was still dealing with the residue of the dot-com bust and economic shock of the 9/11 attacks — but it was still considerably stronger than the America that lived through the Great Recession and continues to see its growth hindered by government austerity.
The extended unemployment benefits Congress is about to let expire actually began under George W. Bush, long after his 2003 extension expired as unemployment dipped below 5 percent again. In 2008, as the financial crisis began to rock the economy, President Bush signed an extension of 13 weeks, 39 weeks total in most states, for anyone living in a state with unemployment over 6.0 percent. He also signed unemployment extensions that specifically helped the victims of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina.
All five times Bush extended unemployment benefits, he did so with the majority of Republicans in Congress supporting him.
At the peak of the crisis, when unemployment was around 10 percent, Congress and President Obama extended benefits to 99 weeks. The current maximum is 73 weeks.
A requirement of receiving benefits is seeking a new job, but with an estimated three people out of work for every one job opening, cutting off benefits likely won’t encourage jobseekers — as Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) imagines — but instead doom them to permanent unemployment. And the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) estimates that the 1.3 million who will be cut off in 2014 will soon swell to 5 million.
There are two huge reasons why now is not the time to cut off the long-term unemployed, explains the CBPP’s Brad Stone.
While the unemployment rate has declined, the overall employment rate has not grown as it usually would during a recovery.
Secondly, cutting off benefits now for those who need them most is unprecedented.
“At 2.6 percent, the long-term unemployment rate is at least twice as high as when any of the emergency federal UI programs that policymakers enacted in each of the previous seven major recessions expired,” Stone wrote.
Even conservatives recognize that it’s just bad policy to refuse to renew the extension.
Democrats in Congress have vowed to tie the extension to the passage of the farm bill in order to force Republicans to approve it retroactively. They’re expected to be supported by an organized grassroots effort from the left to force vulnerable congressmembers to encourage the GOP leadership to take up the bill.
But it’s safe to assume that if it were President Bush asking for the extension rather than President Obama, the GOP would be happy to just say yes.
By: Jason Sattler, The National Memo, December 20, 2013
“The GOP War On Christmas”: Compassionate Conservatism Is As Much An Oxymoron As “Free Agency” In The Sports World
Most of us will eat a great dinner Thursday and we have a lot to be thankful for. But many Americans won’t have much to eat on Thanksgiving or any other day for that matter.
The Boston Globe recently profiled Lurinda DaRosa, a single mother of two children who lives in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston. Lurinda had a job but unfortunately she hasn’t been able to work since she had heart surgery.
Before November 1st, Lurinda received $66 in federal nutrition benefits every month. You can imagine it’s not easy to feed three people on that kind of budget. Don’t try it at home. A gallon of milk at the local supermarket costs $2.99. You can do the math, so you can imagine how tough it was for Lurinda and her children when her federal food assistance allowance dropped to $37 a month effective November 1. The allowance for the DaRosa family and millions of other Americans decreased because House Republicans refused to extend the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits that were part of the Economic Recovery Act.
Whatever happened to compassionate conservatism anyway? These days, compassionate conservatism is as much an oxymoron as the phrase “free agency” in the sports world is.
Lucinda and her family will soon take another hit for the holidays from the GOP Grinch who stole Christmas. The deadline for a new federal budget agreement is 10 days before Christmas. The Republican budget proposal is Rep. Paul Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity” which is a path to poverty for millions of Americans. Under the Ryan budget there will an additional $39 billion in cuts in nutrition assistance for people like Lurinda and her kids over the next 10 years. Good luck with that.
Forty-seven million Americans were on the wrong end of the cuts that just went into effect. Thirty-seven million of the people who suffered the cuts were women and children. The cut took food out of the mouths of babes. And Republicans wonder why so few women vote for them anymore. Ten million of the recipients of the reduced allotments were seniors. A million veterans were also at the wrong end of the budget axe – I hope they didn’t build up too much of an appetite fighting for our freedom. Thank you for your service.
Meanwhile President Obama’s calls to congressional Republicans to cut the hundreds of billions of dollars of corporate welfare fall on deaf ears. Big business has thousands of highly paid lobbyists in Washington. Hungry Americans just don’t have much clout in the capital.
The burden on federal taxpayers would be lighter if Republicans in the House of Representatives would follow the Senate’s example and vote to increase the minimum wage. The best Wal-Mart can do is to sponsor food drives for its workers. McDonald’s does its part by sending its workers a pamphlet on stretching their food dollar. If McDonald’s really wants to help, the fast food giant could pay its workers a living wage.
Conservatives trot out the Bible at the drop of a hat to justify their extremism. During the holiday season, they might want to check out Matthew 25:34-36. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat.'”
This time of year, conservatives complain that liberals are trying to take Christ out of Christmas. One way for Republicans to put Christ back into Christmas would be practice a little Christian charity by voting against the Ryan budget next month.
By: Brad Bannon, U. S. News and World Report, November 26, 2013
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