Archive for poverty

Southern states, some of the poorest, block Obamacare because ???

From our good friend @anomaly100 at FreakOutNation:

The main opposition to Obamacare comes from Southern states, including from Governors who lead some of the nation’s poorest and unhealthiest states. It’s a GOP trend. We see the same thing happening with badly needed clinics being forced by Republicans to close down in rural areas in Southern States, even in states where Planned Parenthood does not offer abortion services, yet those same states have the highest teenage pregnancy rates. The reasoning behind this is a strong distrust of Obama, mostly from areas that supported the Tea Party, where the President was tagged a Muslim- Atheist-Socialist -Marxist. (It’s not as if we didn’t notice.)

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Gov. Nikki Haley said in contrast to Republicans deciding to implement Obamacare in their state, “Not in South Carolina, she said at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference. “We will not expand Medicaid on President Obama’s watch. We will not expand Medicaid ever.”

More at FreakOutNation

The poor favor Democrats, minorities do better under Dem administrations than Republican ones

Professor of political science and author Zoltan Hajnal and political science doctoral student Jeremy D. Horowitz wrote an op-ed for the L.A. Times that is chock full o’ common sense conclusions.

They explain why, without question, minorities do better under Democratic administrations than under Republicans, and it’s all backed up by raw data. Facts are facts, Republicans, no matter how you try to ignore or bend them.

Nor does it matter how many times Mitt Romney (who famously said, “It would be helpful to be Latino”) whispers to his donors at secret meetings how President Santa Obama handed out free gifts to all you not-white, not-wealthy, “illegal” people. There’s a reason (or 12) why BigBucks McWrongerson lost the election, and it had nothing to do with socialist, Marxist, Kenyan handouts:

The data we analyzed show unequivocally that minorities fare better under Democratic administrations than under Republican ones. [...]

Under Democratic presidents, the incomes of black families grew by an average of $895 a year, but only by $142 a year under Republicans. Across 26 years of Democratic leadership, unemployment among blacks declined by 7.9%; under 28 years of Republican presidencies, the rate increased by a net of 13.7%. Similarly, the black poverty rate fell by 23.6% under Democratic presidents and rose by 3% under Republicans.

The results for Latinos and Asians, though based on fewer years of data, show the same pattern. [...]

More important, these gains do not come at the expense of whites… These numbers show that economic condition need not be a zero-sum game pitting races and ethnicities against one another.

This also can’t be rationalized by asserting that Democrats just happen to be in power when things are looking up, or because of the fiscal policies of Republicans who preceded them.

Additionally, the longer Democratic administrations are in office, the more minorities experience economic gains, but the opposite is true under Republican presidents. The authors attribute this to education, economic, and immigration policy differences between the two parties that benefit minorities, whose population numbers are growing… one more fact that scares the pants of the GOP.

Please read the whole piece for specifics. In fact, that might be a particularly wise thing for Republicans to do.

Paul Ryan’s Plan to Put Poverty on a New Diet: Starvation

Your Daily Dose of BuzzFlash at Truthout, via my pal Mark Karlin:

On Thursday, Steve Benen, who edits the Maddow Blog, wrote a commentary on a Paul Ryan “deficit reduction” speech given Wednesday in Cleveland. [...]

Benen notes that the speech was laden with factual errors and rhetorical sleights of the hand, particularly that the deficit which so concerns Ryan and Romney would likely be considerably increased under their plan of maintaining tax cuts for the rich and expanding the military budget by two trillion dollars.

Of particular note is Ryan’s plan for a new diet to reduce poverty: starvation.  As Benen writes:

In reality, Ryan’s proposed budget plan, which was heartily endorsed by Mitt Romney, is simply brutal towards the poor and working families. The plan identifies $5.3 trillion in nondefense budget cuts over the next decade, and nearly two-thirds of the savings come from programs intended to help Americans of limited means. [...]

What Ryan implies in his speech is that by reducing support for the needy, it will force them to find work.  This view that somehow the poor, unemployed, and infirm can self-generate jobs is Ayn Rand at her essence.[...]

Expecting those that our society has left behind to create their own jobs is kind of like arguing that one can live on a diet of imaginary food.

Please read the entire post here.

Cartoon of the Day- Debate Drinking Game

Via.

Paul Ryan’s “phoniest piece of baloney” photo op could hurt soup kitchen

So this happened:

Paul Ryan barred reporters from his convo with homeless in Ohio, and washed dishes “that did not appear to be dirty”

Charity president on Paul Ryan soup kitchen photo op: “Did not have permission. He did nothing. He just came in here to get his picture taken.”

VIDEO: Paul Ryan’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Soup Kitchen Fake Clean-Up

The charity’s president, Brian J. Antal, has been a volunteer for five years and isn’t about to quit now. But ever since Paul Ryan’s fake-dishwashing photo op, he’s getting angry calls and threats from “donors” that they’ll stop supporting the soup kitchen.

Via the wonderful Connie Schultz (wife of Sen. Sherrod Brown who is running for re-election):

When I talked to Antal on Tuesday afternoon, he said he was starting to worry “a little bit” for the safety of his family. [...]

“They keep accusing me of being partisan,” he said. “They say they’re donors who will never give again because of what I said.” None of them would give a name.

Juanita Sherba, St. Vincent’s Saturday coordinator for the dining hall:

It was the phoniest piece of baloney I’ve ever been associated withIn hindsight, I would have never let him in the door.They couldn’t have cared less. The advance man said Paul Ryan wanted to come and talk to our clientele, but he didn’t.”

Antal:

“My objection to Paul Ryan’s visit has nothing to do with his being a Republican. I’m trying to protect our charity…”

Please consider lending a hand by sending a check to:

Society of St. Vincent de Paul, P.O. Box 224, Youngstown, OH 44501

H/t: Greg Ostravich

VIDEO: Paul Ryan’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Soup Kitchen Fake Clean-Up

So this happened:

Paul Ryan barred reporters from his convo with homeless in Ohio, and washed dishes “that did not appear to be dirty”

Charity president on Paul Ryan soup kitchen photo op: “Did not have permission. He did nothing. He just came in here to get his picture taken.”

Now we have video. By my count, it took Paul Ryan all of 20 seconds (1:18-1:38) to wash and rinse a pan that needed no washing or rinsing. The words “cursory” and “inane” come to mind. Did I mention “phony” and “exploit”?

Photo ops are nothing new, but this is the guy who would cut Medicaid for the very same people he’s using to prove what a great man of the people he is. Does he seriously believe that one brief, uninvited walk-through at a soup kitchen would convince undecided voters that he’s their guy?

But I have to admit, he did do a stop-and-chat with a real live homeless man, one of the undeserving “you people” 47% crowd… on his way out the door.

Added: MSNBC is reporting that a couple of “dirty dishes were left for him” just for the Big Moment. Did you see any? Me neither.

Via Gregg Segal for TIME

Charity president on Paul Ryan soup kitchen photo op: “Did not have permission. He did nothing. He just came in here to get his picture taken.”

(Assoicated Press)

Hey boys and girls, remember this post? Paul Ryan barred reporters from his convo with homeless in Ohio, and washed dishes “that did not appear to be dirty”.

Me too! Here’s a quick refresher:

WaPo: Ryan, his wife and their young children headed to the kitchen, donned white aprons and offered to clean up some dishes.

Ryan stood at the sink and took some large metal pans that did not appear to be dirty, soaped them up and rinsed them, remarking as the cameras clicked and the TV cameras rolled that he had spent a summer washing dishes when he was younger.

So he fake-helped the homeless, fake-engaged them, and then fake-helped them clean up.

As it turns out, there’s more to this story, and WaPo has the scoop, again:

Brian J. Antal, president of the Mahoning County St. Vincent De Paul Society, said that he was not contacted by the Romney campaign ahead of the Saturday morning visit by Ryan [...]

“We’re a faith-based organization; we are apolitical because the majority of our funding is from private donations,” Antal said in a phone interview Monday afternoon. “It’s strictly in our bylaws not to do it. They showed up there, and they did not have permission. They got one of the volunteers to open up the doors.

He added: “The photo-op they did wasn’t even accurate. He did nothing. He just came in here to get his picture taken at the dining hall.” [...]

Had they asked for permission, it wouldn’t have been granted. … But I certainly wouldn’t have let him wash clean pans, and then take a picture,” Antal said.

“He did nothing.” That fits right in with just about everything we know about Team Romney. They talk a big game but have nothing of substance to back any of it up. 

Mitt and Ann Romney love to go on and on about his generosity to charities. And now the president of a charity has called them out on the campaign’s phony baloney staging.

About time someone did.

H/t: Greg Ostravich