AAAARGH! If I see another g-damned story blaming welfare>>>

[txaslftist]

I'm gonna fricking explode!

So I'm over browsing Lew Rockwell's site this a.m. (because I'm in many ways a libertarian) and I come across this little gem about how "70 years of welfare" has "bred self-sufficiency out" of the people of New Orleans...

"It appeared to me that many people were on welfare" is a paraphrase of one of his stupid ass comments.

It APPEARED to you? How the fuck do you know that? Because they were black? Sixty goddamn percent of New Orleans was black you dumb fuck. Most of them were not on welfare. Most of them had jobs. Like many people in big cities, they depended on public transportation. Not because they couldn't afford a goddamn car, but because they liked to ride the bus and didn't want to fuck with parking, you miserable, callow, insipid stupid piece of shit.

What about the wheelchair bound elderly? Did it "appear to you" that they lacked "self-sufficiency"? Should they have just, I don't know, kicked loose from their wheelchairs and swum?

And what about the looters? Were the fucking stores open? You're fucking looters who took luxury items certainly didn't lack self-sufficiency, did they? Those "appeared" to me to be Republican looters.

The ones that took food/water -what, they should have been fucking fishing, you moronic idiot? Welfare rolls in Louisiana did not encompass every black person there, you dumbshit fuckhead.

How could you write such a moronic, idiotic, illogical, fallacy-ridden hit piece on the poor and PRETEND to be keeping up with the news out of New Orleans? Your piece smacks of "Hmmm. I just saw some negroes acting up down in the bayou on the news. I think I'll go write a story about welfare. Nevermind the facts, nevermind the human suffering, nevermind the incompetence of the government, nevermind the fact that these are our American brothers dying in the streets of a major city and there bodies are still lying there two fucking weeks later.

Nevermind that the self-sufficient Republicans in Gretna blocked the bridge and refused to let the blacks cross it and escape the city (but most of the whites got through okay).

Oh, no. Get on your idiot fucked up white privilege high horse and write your insipid, nasty, shallow, ill-reasoned piece and blame the victims, you dumb-ass shill.

Here's some choice exerpts:

"For the most part, it APPEARED (on television, sic) middle-class and working-class citizens of New Orleans – the kind of people who have jobs and possess private automobiles – had mostly left by the time the storm hit in all its fury. What cameramen found at and near the Superdome the next day ... were members of a mostly black underclass with no resources of their own, a people who over a period of generations have come to expect someone else – through the cash redistribution agency known as "government" – to provide them with or heavily subsidize their housing, their transportation, their health care, even their children's schooling...."

"...Do we need to ask what 70 years of the welfare state have taught these folks to believe about "property rights"?"

"...those who were not busy looting were ... angry. They were shouting into the cameras, addressing someone out there – the government? Us? – who they believed owed them an obligation to "get on down here" and bring them some stuff. Food, water, whatever they needed. Bring it to us – the message seemed clear – or we're just going to take it."

"...If I lived in a city built below sea level, what would it cost me to buy and store a rubber raft or a beat-up old canoe – perhaps on the roof?" -Is he fucking joking?

"Applied over a period of generations, the welfare state can breed self-sufficiency out of a people."

-The author of this drivel is:
Vin Suprynowicz an "assistant editorial page editor" (-is that really a job?) of the daily Las Vegas Review-Journal (is that really a newspaper?)and author of The Black Arrow (and is this hit piece really a transparent self promoting opportunistic pile of crap?).


Oh, and Vin, GO FUCK YOURSELF.

[texpatriot2004]

1. Yeah, THOSE REALLY PISS ME OFF TOO! n/t

[TallahasseeGrannie]

6. I could buy this argument IF

strong, able-bodied men could have hoofed to a stream or something and gotten water, but even the ambulatory were helpless to do a damned thing. They were completely TRAPPED. Not by laziness or lack of intelligence or self-sufficiency. Self-sufficiency might have resulted in nice, neat trash heaps but how would they get water? Cool off? Feed themselves? You don't keep insects in a jar and assume the strong ones will survive. They will all die.

I think that this argument is partly a human response to the tragedy with "this wouldn't happen to me" because I am too strong, smart, etc. We have a need to not acknowledge that sometimes we are just screwed.

[ComerPerro]

2. Conservatives don't know the fist thing about being "self sufficient"

Its just idealistic nonsense.

They like to discuss "self-reliance" because they like to imagine that they don't need anyone else in society, that they can get by just fine.

That's why I never go out of my way to do anything for a conservative. I wouldn't want to insult them by making them rely on another person.

I see someone stranded on the side of a road next to a car with a "W04" sticker on it, I keep on driving.

They ought to be self-reliant enough to help themselves and pick themselves up by their bootstraps.

[Frederik]

3. That's the Libertarian agenda

They are better than the Republicans in that they are less hypocritical, they don't like military spending any more than they like spending on welfare. So they are anti-war, anti-interventionist, which I sympathize with. But in domestic policy, they are close to the Gingrich/Norquist Republicans, except they are pro-ACLU, civil liberties, anti-Patriot Act, anti-"homeland security". Slightly less fascist, in other words.

[flowomo]

4. The Tracinksi piece has spread like a virus

I wrote my weekly newspaper column about it last week and have received e-mails from around the country from people who also received it by e-mail. Horrifying. Here's my column:

www.cumberlink.com/articles/2005/09/13/editorial/rich_lewis/lewis01.txt


Here's one e-mail I received this morning (name masked):

I'm amazed and distressed that your piece is the only criticism of the Tracinski rant that I can find. Thanks for writing it. Perhaps the lack of response it due to a misplaced feeling that he's so out there that there's no need for one. But a quick Google shows how often the Tracinski piece is being reproduced all over the country.

-Greg S
East Lansing, MI

[txaslftist]

7. Nice column; nice rebuttal...

...one problem I have with it is that it assumes the basic underlying premise of Tracyski's piece to be valid: that the majority of the Superdome and Convention Center evacuees and the looters were either unemployed or on welfare.

I don't believe it. I've read statistics on New Orleans, both the unemployment rate and the rate of vehicle ownership. There were many, many people there who 1. had jobs, and 2. had no cars.

Babs Bush made the same damning assumption: "Well, most of them were underprivileged anyway..."

Were they? How the fuck does she know that? Is it really true? I think most of them were probably living paycheck to paycheck, scraping by, working people and the large families they supported.

Like the rest of America. Like YOU and ME.

Our American brothers and sisters.

[flowomo]

10. you're right on that point...

My newspaper has its local columnists on a strict 850-word limit per piece so I was only able to make a fraction of the number of points that could have and should have been made. I assumed the premise on an "even if" basis... though I don't believe it either.

[LynzM]

9. Bookmarking that one for later

Someone posted Tracinski's rant on a board I'm on... I may post this link in reply... with my own addendum. Grr.

[Brewman_Jax]

5. Deluded neo-cons

To keep a long story very short, I remember talking to one who then said, "I'm glad the job interview is next week, my unemployment is running out."

I should've asked him how long will it take him to re-pay the government since he's so "self-sufficient" and whines about liberals, but likes liberal programs.

[CrispyQ]

8. The absolute best retort to those that whine about welfare

is to point out corporate welfare makes personal welfare pale in comparison. Then back it up with facts & stories of corporate abuse that will boggle their mind.

Here's one:

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/time/1998/11/02/corp.welfare.html

snip...

How would you like to pay only a quarter of the real estate taxes you owe on your home? And buy everything for the next 10 years without spending a single penny in sales tax? Keep a chunk of your paycheck free of income taxes? Have the city in which you live lend you money at rates cheaper than any bank charges? Then have the same city install free water and sewer lines to your house, offer you a perpetual discount on utility bills--and top it all off by landscaping your front yard at no charge?

Fat chance. You can't get any of that, of course. But if you live almost anywhere in America, all around you are taxpayers getting deals like this. These taxpayers are called corporations, and their deals are usually trumpeted as "economic development" or "public-private partnerships." But a better name is corporate welfare. It's a game in which governments large and small subsidize corporations large and small, usually at the expense of another state or town and almost always at the expense of individual and other corporate taxpayers.


more...

The rationale to curtail traditional welfare programs, such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children and food stamps, and to impose a lifetime limit on the amount of aid received, was compelling: the old system didn't work. It was unfair, destroyed incentive, perpetuated dependence and distorted the economy. An 18-month TIME investigation has found that the same indictment, almost to the word, applies to corporate welfare. In some ways, it represents pork-barrel legislation of the worst order. The difference, of course, is that instead of rewarding the poor, it rewards the powerful.

And it rewards them handsomely. The Federal Government alone shells out $125 billion a year in corporate welfare, this in the midst of one of the more robust economic periods in the nation's history. Indeed, thus far in the 1990s, corporate profits have totaled $4.5 trillion--a sum equal to the cumulative paychecks of 50 million working Americans who earned less than $25,000 a year, for those eight years.

(emphasis mine)
===

There are hundreds & hundreds more articles on the web about corporate welfare.

I recently listened to a co-worker whine about welfare queens. When he was finished, I recited several incidents of corporate welfare. "But that's business," he said. "So business, which makes profits & often pay very little in taxes, has the right to get government handouts, and opportunities to increase & improve their business, but human citizens do not?" He shut up & walked away.

These people are so worried about their taxes going to a family in need but never stop to think about the billions the government is giving to corporations, which for the most part, do not net the results or benefits that the government was originally 'paying' to get.


Some other good sites:

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate_accountability/

http://www.citizenworks.org/

http://www.corpwatch.org/