Those tiny little shoulders can carry around millions of dollars, but are just too small to carry the problems of the poor, because, well, they already have a safety net to help them be poor. If you want to see how bitter and envious those poor people are behind him, you must click it.
“It’s amazing to hear your deepest convictions articulated so poignantly by a politician,” said out-of-work Denver resident Austin Matthews, 36, admitting he had never before encountered a candidate— or any human being, for that matter— who had connected with him on such a basic emotional level. “He comes right out and says that any acknowledgment of income inequality in the United States is driven solely by bitterness and envy from the lower classes and shouldn’t even be discussed publicly. It’s like he’s tapped directly into the soul of everyday Americans.”
—The Onion
Super Money Man, Willard Romney, said he is “not concerned about the very poor” because America’s liberal government programs— the so-called social “safety net”— already help them.
Uh huh. Because livin’ life in the ‘net is just so wonderful, right Willard?
SuperMoneyMan put it this way: “We have a safety net there. [“there” being the general area where the poor congregate— under bridges, steam grates, make-shift cardboard housing] If it needs a repair, I’ll fix it. We [they] have food stamps, we [they] have Medicaid, we [they] have housing vouchers; we [they] have programs to help the poor.”
But what is really super, and even miraculous— he intends to repair that ‘net by making it a lot smaller. Romney’s budget proposals start by taking $127 Billion out of the SNAP program, which is very likely to let millions of low-income families slip right through the net and into food beggar status. How’s that for connecting with the poor on a basic emotional level.
Nevada is the next stop for the Republican Clown Car. While Romney’s Superpac will continue to spend many millions of dollars blanketing radio and television with positive reminders of just how negative his Superpac can be when it comes to gaining power:
Nevada has the highest foreclosure and unemployment rates in the United States, and coincidentally, has some bitchin’ holes in its social safety net. It’s a safe $10,000 bet Willard isn’t going to do squat to get them fixed before for the Nevada primary. But then, the really poor folk already have a hard time keeping up with current news and getting to their polling places anyway; or just getting an address so they can register to vote, let alone qualifying for Medicade.
Medicaid covers only 25% of non-elderly adults with annual incomes below 139% of the poverty line, the threshold for Medicaid eligibility. (The poverty line is an annual income of $22,314 for a family of four.) In Nevada, Medicaid covers just 12% of non-elderly adults in that income range. More than 50% of them are uninsured, compared with 44%— 21.5 million people— for the rest of the United States.
And speaking of the rest of the United States: Food stamp participation rate of those eligible was just 72% nationwide in 2009. (Oh and Fuck You, Gingrich.) Nearly 2 million people have been out of work more than 99 weeks nationwide. Clearly they’re still filled with bitterness and envy over income equality.
But want to know what really chafes my ass about SuperMoneyMan?
His religious hypocrisy.
Despite the usual number of strange cosmological peccadillos that infect most evolutionary religions, and that underwear fetish thing, Mormons do profess to believe in Jesus. So you would think when he said things like, “Inasmuch as you minister to one of the least of my brethren, you have done this service to me,” and, “He who would be greatest among you let him be server of all,” and “Whoso stops his ears to the cry of the poor, he also shall some day cry for help, and no one will hear him”— would all be “talking points” in Willard’s approach to the holes in the social safety net.
You would be wrong.
