Errrr.....NO One Is Taking Joan Walsh Literally!

Joan Walsh used a reductio ad absurdum ploy to show how bad SNAP limits COULD  become if abominations like Brownback's KS limits on SNAP purchases were accepted. 

Evidently, the blogger who took issue with my take on poverty in Colorado and food stamps, seems to believe I took Joan Walsh's words literally as opposed to a metaphor of  (extreme) reference for what Repukes are trying to do in states like Brownback's Kansas. So let me clear the air here once and for all.

When I gave Joan's quote from a salon.com piece:

if you’re in Wisconsin, and relying on food stamps, remember that Republicans don’t want you to have ketchup on your hamburger.They’d probably rather you didn’t have a hamburger at all, but Wisconsin farmers and ranchers have clout, and so proposed cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program made room for Wisconsin products. But they still don’t want you to have “crab, lobster, shrimp, or any other shellfish.” Or ketchup. Or spaghetti sauce. Really.


I (and she) intended it as a reductio ad absurdum illustration of how bad it MIGHTget if bully programs like those Brownback has tried to implement in KS aren't halted or demolished. To remind readers, this was in reference to Brownback's ill -conceived notion of  limiting what Kansas food stamp-welfare recipients can purchase using their benefits. That included, but was not limited to, some minor pleasures, such as KFC chicken, Snickers bars, giant bags of M&Ms, or even playing an arcade game or two, buying a lotto ticket or paying to go for a freakin' swim.

Joan's point and mine then, is that if a brain dead scalawag like Brownback can get away with this shit in Kansas, what's to stop another state  from preventing or limiting people from buying food perks with their SNAP or welfare money - things that make burgers taste better like ketchup (catsup) or sauce for spaghetti, or hot sauce for rice, or bbcue sauce for spare ribs - oh wait, I forgot they mustn't eat ribs either!  Poor folk gotta stick to rice, oats, and such with no flavor.

Oh, and god forbid they try lobster thermidor or go to Red Lobster for unlimited shrimp. You see what I mean?   Thus, if one accepts Brownback's stupid limits one could see the pukes going even further to deprive SNAP folks of the good things of life. And my point was - as well as Joan's -, they SHOULD be able to enjoy those damned things even if receiving gov't benefits! (Certainly up to the limits they can afford, so if they have $22 left on the last day of the benefits month they ought to be able to get a bucket of KFC chicken - OR a few Five Guys burgers! It's not the state gov't job to wag fingers and say "Oh no!" for fuck's sake.)

The reasons were made clear in and excellent WaPo piece ('What Kansas Gets Wrong with Welfare Decision')  by Emily Badger but perhaps my blogger critic did't get them or didn't want to. To re-reference the point of the piece, Badger flayed the "logic" behind the Brownback bunkum noting,  "the decision is problematic in at least three really big ways" . This was after already skewering  the underlying  canard that it provides  "protection for the taxpayer who shouldn't be asked to help people who squander gov't money on 'vices'".

Ms. Badger's three arguments again:

1) Economic: There's virtually no evidence that the poor actually spend their money in the rash ways advertised by Brownback.  The poor are actually much more savvy about how they spend their money because they have much less of it - as Gweneth Paltrow learned when she tried the "SNAP Challenge" and gave up after 4 days. (She'd already exceeded the $29/ week  limit.)

2) Moral principle of equivalence:  She observes: "We don't require Pell Grant recipients to prove they are pursuing a degree that will get them a real job as opposed to say philosophy or English Lit. We don't require wealthy families who cash in on the home interest deduction to prove they're not using their homes as brothels."   In other words, the strings we attach to gov't aid are uniquely for the poor - as if being poor itself is somehow immoral-  requiring criminal monitoring- like for a felon wearing an ankle bracelet.

3) Prejudicial perceptions:  In many ways the lack of application of a moral principle of equivalence (2) arises because Americans who receive other government benefits fail to see they are also in the recipient class. They don't recognize that, like the poor, they are also getting something from the government and hence - at taxpayer expense.  The issue, again, isn't the specific benefit form - whether Medicare, VA benefits, or Social Security - but that ALL come at taxpayer expense!

But this is covered up in two ways: (i) the belief that their benefits are different because they are "special" or "earned" so can't be classed with SNAP or welfare, and (ii) their benefits are always "submerged" (hidden or more concealed) than compared with a SNAP recipient who must actually produce a special card (see image) at the grocer's so is immediately recognized as "on welfare".  Thus, the SNAP card inadvertently becomes a "badge" of shame that enables other gov't beneficiaries to instantly make judgments.

Political scientist Suzanne Mettler, cited by Ms. Badger, calls the judgmental gov't  beneficiaries part of the "submerged benefits state". This means their own benefits are more "out of sight, out of mind". Thus a SNAP card and a welfare check are "incredibly visible ...while tuition tax breaks and Medicare are not".   This submerged state, then,  is evidence of a basic and pervasive double standard.

It is time we remove that damnable double standard which was the actual thrust of Walsh's reductio ad absurdum. In other words, irrespective of the gov't benefits received (VA,Social Security disability, Social Security proper, SNAP) we let recipients spend them any damned way they wish up to the practical limits they can afford  - without, for example, resorting to theft or shop lifting to satisfy them. (I.e. once your monthly benefit is exhausted,  that's it - THEN you pinch pennies and maybe settle for rice instead of KFC chicken or Five Guys burgers)

Is that point clear enough? I hope so!

Millennial Waitress Chloe Hough Schools Kansas Governor Sam Brownback

I realize that from time to time I have openly bashed Millennials -such as Abby Huntsman and "Kennedy" - mainly for being uninformed, clueless twits when they spout off  on things they don't know - such as Huntsman on Social Security and Kennedy on global warming.   At the same time it is important to give recognition to those Millennials who have demonstrated not only political insight and savvy but moxy in speaking truth to misplaced power.

Chloe Hough merits all kudos, for taking down congenital asshole and social justice antagonist, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback. This is the knuckle dragging fool who actually proposed a law to prevent food stamp beneficiaries from enjoying any bit of pleasure with their SNAP monies. In other words, he's a turd and troglodyte - e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/04/again-why-ks-welfare-decision-is-wrong.html

But few may know that Brownback (who, god forbid, may actually be a distant cousin of mine as wifey in her ancestry.com research has turned up "Brownbacks" on the Stahl family tree in Kansas) has even dug his state into further backward holes. This concerns education  funding.

Brownback has now imposed public education cuts, which saving he plans to use to help fill the massive revenue shortfalls created by his income tax cuts for the wealthy. Under a block-grant funding scheme Brownback signed into law this winter, school district such as Topeka's are slated to lose $3.6 million in funding this year and over the next two years. This feral scheme - which could only have been conceived by a jackal -  jeopardizes a wide array of academic and extracurricular offerings; e.g. for Topeka High students. Thus, athletics programs, arts education, and foreign language courses could be on the chopping block. Other districts have cut short their school years; still others  warn they may not have enough toilet paper to last out the school year. (Or they may have to ask students to bring their own)

Enter now a politically educated millennial waitress named Chloe Hough  who  sparked a viral Internet sensation over the weekend after a chance encounter with Brownback. Working her last-ever shift at Boss Hawg’s, a popular Topeka barbecue joint, the 22-year-old posted on Facebook Saturday night:

 “You guys 911 emergency: It’s my last shift and I am waiting on our governor. What should I say to him. This is not a test. Go.”

 Her ultimate decision? On the line where customers typically include a tip, Hough marked a big “X,” writing alongside it, “Tip the schools.” A message to the dimwit, knuckle dragging Sammie that she was onto him and his scheme to bleed schools dry while filling the coffers of the rich. (A scheme, btw, cooked up by the reprobate Koch brothers who are funding Brownback. Again, difficult to process this maggot may be a distant relation!)

Officially, Brownback’s office has yet to comment, however it probably gave the indirect 'go ahead' to the egomaniacal director of the Kansas Republican Party, who denounced Hough’s “arrogant stupidity” on Monday.  Now, imagine that it's bad enough a craven political shill like Brownback would attempt this school fund cutting scheme - and not even have the cojones to directly respond to her. Instead the twerp sends this "director" on a fool's errand to complain about Chloe's "arrogant stupidity" when she was in fact a voting citizen speaking truth to power!  The pseudo-director is the one with the arrogant stupidity here because his little political peons only serve at the behest of the voter's will, voters like Chloe.

In a recent interview with Salon.com she was asked:  Why education?

Her response:

My sister is a factor. She’s lost a lot of educators, and just hasn’t had a good education experience in general. So that bothered me. She’s lost a lot of teachers and paraprofessionals, but more generally, there’s been such a lack of communication between the state government and the schools.

I met with a state legislator recently, and with the block grants, the attitude was basically, “We’re going to get this passed no matter what they want.” I think that’s ridiculous. That’s what I was more mad about.

I know a lot of people think what I did is funny, and it’s gone viral. But I honestly hope, even though this will blow over eventually, that people continue to question the way things are going.
Education is so important. But we’re in an embarrassing place. When I meet people outside of Kansas, they’re like, “So do you believe in evolution?”

Which is a damned shame! Because as my wife's ancestry searches revealed, the Stahl clan in Kansas around the turn of the last century include a stellar teacher and ‘Renaissance Man’ - Jacob Brumbaugh:

Jacob Brumbaugh, ca. 1909

  who believed the most important thing was the advancement of young minds especially encouraging them to question an array of ideas and long held beliefs via their education. If he was alive today to see what Brownback and his cronies were doing to wreck Kansas secondary school education -  well, he'd probably have a fit - then begin organizing to get rid of the little termite.

Salon.com also asked Chloe:

Would you say you’ve always been a political person, or has Brownback been the catalyst?

To which she responded:

I think [I’ve been a political person]. But he’s definitely awakened something more, because all of his policies are just backwards. He wants to take Kansas back into the Dark Ages. And it’s not just education. It’s the fact that people can get fired for being LGBT. It’s the fact that we don’t have equal opportunities. It’s all kinds of things.

To another question, there was a most telling reply:

Is there anything more you’d like to say to him?

I just don’t think it’s fair that you can essentially buy your way into politics. He has the Koch brothers funding him, and it’s not like he has any good ideas. And I don’t understand why he got reelected.

But I also want him to know that I’m not afraid of him. Because a lot of people have said to me, “You’ve done something I could never do, I work for the state or I’m a teacher and I would get fired if I said something like this.” And that’s not right. You can talk about your opinions, and you shouldn’t have to worry about being fired.

Indeed, Chloe.  But as we know, in these United States, that thing called "free speech" while hyped as some defining attribute, is really limited. You get to vocalize or write your views all right. But you are not free from blowback or being penalized for them, including firing. Ask former CU professor Ward Churchill who was terminated for his essay "On Roosting Chickens" after 9/11. (Though CU claimed it was for  "plagiarism"  based on a departmental investigation. Trouble was it had only focused on Churchill, no one else.)

Seriously? Those On Food Stamps Not Allowed To Buy Any Goodies?

It is a sad fact, known mainly to those of us who have the opportunity to travel beyond our shores, that we inhabit a very mean-spirited country. This came out back in Nov.,2013 when the SNAP (food stamps) program was viciously cut back with far reaching repercussions of hunger - especially for 16 million kids.  Many pediatricians warned of the consequences, but the GOP didn't care. They were determined to cut so the military could get much more.

Now we learn of a number of states (such as Kansas) where plans are afoot - such as by the mean-spirited guv Sam Brownback, to pass legislation to ensure food stamp recipients can't even purchase anything that remotely hints of luxuries - including cookies, candies, cakes - as well as preventing families "on the dole" from using public pools. Are you shitting me? We're going to worry and fret about forlorn families and their kids having it too good when our whole malformed system is bent to ensure only the richest prosper and jobs are sent away overseas by the millions? Meanwhile, these same rich bastards are able to milk the system for everything it's worth to the extent they can even afford luxury, gold laminated bathtubs:

Excuse me, but what the hell is wrong with this picture? Well, the misbegotten notion - dispelled by the most basic research - that the "wealthy earned their goodies".  Oh yeah, they earned them all right, by pushing through policies that sent millions of jobs overseas. Policies started by the likes of "Chainsaw Al' Dunlap back in the nineties when he was with Sunbeam - and decided having jobs in Mexico was better for shareholders, since the Mexicans would only earn half of what Americans were getting - and no benefits. A shyster born every minute!

But don't think Dunlap is the only clown who did this and got away with it (hint: Jack Welch of GE did too)!  So then, years later the path was already paved for endemic poverty of millions  -yet the proud and the ignorant pound their breasts and believed they were doing a good thing by keeping the poor off "welfare" - hence designing the hideous "welfare to work" programs.

While all this was going on, I got a real kick out of some outraged WSJ pieces in the late 90s - some of which I still have- caterwauling about the nerve of those Germans to use unemployment benefits to take holidays in Italy or France's sun coast.  So what? If they need time off from pounding the pavement, big deal! But the WSJ and its snarky assholes made a federal case out of it, and then bragged how - at least in the US of A- we'd never allow any unemployment insurance recipients to get away with such nonsense. But see, the Germans aren't all anal about such stuff as we are. As my friend Reinhardt put it two years ago: "The Germans helped to pay in for those benefits and they can use them any way they wish up to a year. And if that means taking a holiday or two, so what? It's no skin off our noses and that's what we pay our taxes for!"

Which thinking would be totally anathema to the Puritan American, brainwashed by the early messages of John Calvin, to keep his nose to the grindstone if he wants to win an eventual place in the next world. Even today, evidently, too many buy into this Puritan-Calvinist bull pockey, hence the yen to ensure food stamp beneficiaries go to no amusement arcades, Malls or just to the candy store for M&Ms.  Jeezus, it makes you want to rip your hair out - the level of petty thinking - tied to "wasting taxpayer dollars" while the rich waste hundreds of billions a year with their own rancid games- including tax write offs and dubious trusts!

Look, no one - no American, "likes to" file for food stamps, but since the Bushies sent the whole U.S. economy into the crapper ca. 2007-08 with their push for minimum wage jobs only (and keeping the minimum wage as low as possible), sending 7 million other jobs overseas to China and India, and de-regulation of banks - allowing them to sell crap subprime mortgages to people who couldn't afford them, not to mention wreaking havoc with their tax cuts and wars of choice, lower and many middle class families have had no choice. The Bushie combo of massive tax cuts for the wealthiest combined with setting off a speculative bubble that burst in 2008 - with more than 30 million middle class folks losing up to 40% of their 401ks, engendered the need for families to seek food stamp relief out of pure desperation.

To now heap insult onto injury and assert they're not even entitled to some pleasures (including swimming - and we know how important exercise is!)  is just plain nuts and, as I said, mean spirited. Certainly, if the families are able to wisely budget their meager resources to have some enjoyment it ought to be allowed- without the likes of Brownback or anyone else having a cow.  And we can damned well afford to be a little bit generous here given how the parasitic wealthy are endlessly using their ill-gotten gains to splurge on expensive toys and trips, and gorging on  $25,000 (apiece)  Frrrozen Haute Chocolate   desserts,  while children go to bed hungry. Shit, those poor kids deserve a bag of M&Ms once in a frickin' while! 

Sensible Americans need to express outrage on this, at least to the same degree of decibels as when Indiana tried to foist its phony religious freedom laws on its people - in the name of bigotry. In this case, Brownback and his misbegotten ilk are trying to force perpetual misery on already downtrodden families by denying them even the most benign luxuries.

 I leave with Barb Ehrenreich's powerful words (This Land is Their Land, pp. 6-7):

"How many 'wake up calls' do we need, people? How many broken levees, drowned cities, depleted food pantries, people dead for lack of ordinary health care? (Waters poisoned by blown deep water oil wells)......Why don't we dare say it? The looting of America has gone on too long, and the average American is too maxed out, overworked, and overspent to have anything left to take. We need a new deal, a new distribution of power and wealth, if we want to restore the beautiful idea that was America".

With a new distribution of wealth and power, no American will have to depend on food stamps, and we won't have the likes of Sam Brownback or his clones dictating to people what they can purchase using food stamps or welfare monies!

See also:

http://www.salon.com/2015/04/17/why_gwyneths_snap_challenge_bombed/