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You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / Welfare and Minorities

Welfare and Minorities

by John Cole|  November 15, 20079:18 am| 45 Comments

This post is in: Domestic Politics, Politics

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Ross Douthat has an interesting post discussing race and Republicanism (following on the Brooks/Krugman/Reagan debate), and in it is the following:

Publius is right: “Nixon’s law and order message was lost on no one.” It was lost on no one because violent crime went up three hundred and sixty-seven percent between 1960 and 1980. (Frankly, it’s remarkable that Republicans didn’t do a better job of exploiting the issue than they did.) So too with welfare, where conservative attacks on the system resonated as a national issue not because racist voters didn’t want to give poor blacks handouts (though they didn’t), but because the system really didn’t work. And the proof is in the pudding: We still have a costly welfare bureaucracy that caters more to minorities than to whites, but it’s no longer a political liability for liberals because the system is no longer the disaster that it became in the Seventies and Eighties.

Is this accurate? I had assumed (perhaps because I am from West Virginia), that there were FAR more whites on social services than minorities. Are we talking about percentages, or real numbers, or what?

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45Comments

  1. 1.

    jenniebee

    November 15, 2007 at 9:32 am

    Last numbers I saw, the plurality of recipients of AFDC and WIC were recently divorced white mothers.

  2. 2.

    Notorious P.A.T.

    November 15, 2007 at 9:47 am

    Based on my own experiences working at a grocery store, there are at least as many poor whites receiving social services as poor blacks.

    As for the system “not working”, I would be interested in knowing what he means by that. The Great Society did succeed in decreasing poverty in America, and even the people who weren’t lifted out of being poor were/are at least kept alive at a little better standard of living. Sure, Welfare and the like are “costly” but then any system that gives money to poor people is going to be less than profitable. If you want to point to programs that are unnecessarily costly, look at billion-dollar helicopters that can’t even take off without bursting into flames.

  3. 3.

    Pug

    November 15, 2007 at 9:54 am

    If you want to point to programs that are unnecessarily costly, look at billion-dollar helicopters that can’t even take off without bursting into flames.

    It also might not be a bad idea to look at the real welfare queens of America, farmers. Multi-million dollar payments to the likes of Sam Brownback are also costly.

  4. 4.

    Libby Spencer

    November 15, 2007 at 9:56 am

    I’m reasonably sure by observation and vague recollections of statistics that whites actually outnumber blacks on the rolls.

  5. 5.

    Andrew

    November 15, 2007 at 10:02 am

    Ross Douhat is basically wrong about anything involving statistics, economics, or politics, so I don’t know why anyone bothers with him.

  6. 6.

    Bob In Pacifica

    November 15, 2007 at 10:03 am

    Since the disparity between rich and poor, or between the ultra-rich and everyone else, is growing, one could say that capitalism isn’t working.

    Or it is. Depends on what you’re working for.

  7. 7.

    Rudi

    November 15, 2007 at 10:29 am

    I do believe in Michigan and other midwest states, that a significant number of “welfare cheats” are in white rural areas. I doubt that these white Christian folk steal or poach deer. Why don’t these lazy white cheats move from under developed rural areas to China, where all the jobs are?

  8. 8.

    Haltelcere

    November 15, 2007 at 10:29 am

    Does anyone have any statistics on the percentage of people who have previously received government assistance and are now self-sufficient vs. the percentage of people who have never ended their reliance on assistance? Would not the measure of a program’s success best be measured by the number of people successfully helped become independent instead of a strait number of people receiving assistance at a given time?

  9. 9.

    Garrigus Carraig

    November 15, 2007 at 10:40 am

    I’m pretty sure that 1) white welfare recipients outnumber their African-American counterparts, 2) a higher percentage of blacks are on welfare than whites, 3) the reason for the oft-repeated pabulum is that media people and organizations are based in cities, while white poverty is generally a rural phenomenon.

  10. 10.

    Zifnab

    November 15, 2007 at 10:56 am

    I’m pretty sure that 1) white welfare recipients outnumber their African-American counterparts, 2) a higher percentage of blacks are on welfare than whites, 3) the reason for the oft-repeated pabulum is that media people and organizations are based in cities, while white poverty is generally a rural phenomenon.

    As blacks make up about 15% of the US population, I find it incredibly hard to believe that black welfare recipients outnumber white welfare recipients. But every time I talk to a Republican blogger, he firmly insists that he lives proudly in poverty and has pulled himself up by his own bootstraps and that he’s paying way too much in tax dollars that go to people richer than him who are just too lazy to do whatever it is that he does.

    So I guess welfare must not be working, if its not making these people happy.

  11. 11.

    Tom Levenson

    November 15, 2007 at 10:57 am

    Re Andrew’s comment.
    Yeah — I noticed that about Ross almost as soon as he popped up on the Atlantic’s list. What is strange to me is that Andrew Sullivan, the Atlantic’s lead right-of-center blogger, is also clueless when it gets past the fourth number (you know — one, two, three, many). On the basis of that sample, plus the occasional dipping in to the truely crazy wingnutosphere, I’m willing to propose that one of the defining characteristics of right-wing punditry is innumeracy.

    Whatcha y’all think?

    Tom

  12. 12.

    cleek

    November 15, 2007 at 11:00 am

    i was hoping to find some info about these questions in the comments… instead i found “James”

  13. 13.

    protected static

    November 15, 2007 at 11:03 am

    It has been a while since I’ve looked at the numbers, but my recollection is that most people on assistance are off of it within a year – something like 60% use it for 6 months to a year.

    Another problem with the statistics is, well, what do you mean by ‘welfare?’ AFDC? WIC? Section 8 assistance? Medicaid? Medicare? Everything but Medicare? Since each program targets different populations, you could probably skew the picture of the ‘typical recipient’ depending upon which programs are looked at.

  14. 14.

    jcricket

    November 15, 2007 at 11:07 am

    I’m willing to propose that one of the defining characteristics of right-wing punditry is innumeracy.

    Sullivan is just about the worst when it comes to statistics at any level beyond “a bunch”. His continued defense of the Bell Curve (over the last 10 years) hypothesis is a classic example of that.

    But yes, I agree. The whole S-CHIP pile-on pretty much depended on their inability to understand the numbers involved in the various permutations of the bills being promoted by the parties.

    More importantly, GOOGLE BITCHES!

    According to the statistics, whites form the largest racial group on welfare; half of all welfare recipients leave in the first two years; and teenagers form less than 8 percent of all welfare mothers.

    My citizen “journalism” strikes again.

    I guarantee that not a single right-wing blogger understands the facts behind the rise and fall of violent crime (btw, went down a lot under Clinton, back up a lot under Bush). They’re more complicated than “more law and order” or “gun control laws”. I know, one of my close relatives studies this kind of thing for a living.

  15. 15.

    Jake

    November 15, 2007 at 11:07 am

    You (or anyone) can check the Census Bureau, they should have the stats. I could check the Census Bureau, but I’m feeling strangely un-research geeky today.

  16. 16.

    Pb

    November 15, 2007 at 11:17 am

    jcricket,

    I think today’s numbers are a bit different–we don’t even have AFDC anymore. On the other hand, as protected static mentions, it wouldn’t make sense to just look at one program. But in any case, here’s a good article on poverty–and the growing problem of child poverty.

  17. 17.

    jcricket

    November 15, 2007 at 11:17 am

    BTW – same site I linked to has some good historical statistics (oooh) showing that welfare helps reduce poverty.

    The historical evidence is clear: welfare reduces poverty, and the lack of it increases it. In the 1920s, fully half of all Americans could not make ends meet. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs had reduced poverty to about 20 percent in the 50s. Johnson’s Great Society reduced this to 11.1 percent by 1973. Since the rise of the corporate special interest system in 1975, individual welfare benefits have been shrinking, and poverty has been steadily rising, to over 15 percent today.

    The ignorance of even the right’s “leading lights” about the effects of welfare and social security in lifting (and continuing to lift) enormous numbers of people out of poverty is simply astonishing.

    In fact, I think it’s safe to say that Pretty much all Libertarian (big L) and Republican right-wing arguments these days are based on hypotheticals with little connection to how people actually act in the real world, or evidence we have about the results of policies when put into action. Of course these results are often dismissed with a “true libertarianism/conservatism has never been really tried” (where have I heard that before, I wonder…)

  18. 18.

    James F. Elliott

    November 15, 2007 at 11:19 am

    Having recently completed my graduate studies in social welfare, I’ll just wade in.

    People get confused by the semantics. Whites make up the majority of welfare recipients, especially when one considers that the biggest welfare program by far is the Earned Income Tax Credit, not Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. Rural whites and divorced/single white mothers were the (bare) majority recipients of General Assistance, and are now a plurality on the TANF rolls; so, when Ross says that welfare primarily benefits minorities, he’s talking about this statistic, which is simply not the whole picture.

    Blacks and other minorities make up a higher percentage of the rolls relative to their population share of society at large (i.e. blacks are some 12% or so (as of 2000 census) of the population, but make up a much larger percentage of the “welfare” rolls). Welfare as conceived (especially AFDC, and later TANF) initially and historically has benefitted single/widowed white mothers far more than any other group.

    Whether one is talking about FDR, Johnson, Reagan, or Clinton, the average lifetime stay on welfare rolls is about five years for approximately 90% of welfare recipients. There is a small but statistically significant group of “repeat offenders” who return to the rolls time and again; or, rather, used to until Welfare Reform. And as with any large financial system, be it welfare or hedge funds, there were indeed people who gamed the system to their financial benefit.

    But no, Ross Douthat doesn’t really know what he’s talking about. At best, he’s reading off talking points that cherry-pick their statistics without having the intellectual acumen to learn about the subject before he writes.

  19. 19.

    Jon H

    November 15, 2007 at 11:23 am

    “It was lost on no one because violent crime went up three hundred and sixty-seven percent between 1960 and 1980. ”

    Hm. What happened between 1960 and 1980…

    Anyone know any estimates for the number of Vietnam vets convicted for violent crime in this period?

    I’m not trying to cast aspersions on vets in general, it’s just that we know returned vets with PTSD can get into trouble, can end up homeless, can exhibit aggression, can self-medicate, and I wouldn’t be surprised if sometimes they (or their kids) got on the wrong path.

    It’s entirely possible that the answer is ‘damned few Vietnam vets were involved’, which I would certainly be happy with.

  20. 20.

    Jody

    November 15, 2007 at 11:23 am

    …it’s a blanket statement that trashes welfare while keeping the racists riled. YOU tell ME if it’s true or not.

  21. 21.

    Jon H

    November 15, 2007 at 11:33 am

    ” I doubt that these white Christian folk steal or poach deer.”

    Nah, they make and sell crystal meth and/or their asses.

  22. 22.

    Slugger

    November 15, 2007 at 11:47 am

    Let me translate for you liberals:
    If you’re on welfare, you are no longer “white.”
    Understand?

  23. 23.

    SpotWeld

    November 15, 2007 at 11:52 am

    Just a quick thanks to James (@11:19 am) for some better numbers. The amount of time a given recipient spent “in the system” was something a always wondered about. I always wondered that if we had a continous stream of people entering *and then leaving* the system (without re-entering) it would be an indicator that on some level it worked… of course there’s always the debate on how they’re leaving the system and if they should have ever been in it to begin with. But the general image put forward is this huge static nameless mass of “poor people” who somehow put a drain on everyone else.

  24. 24.

    Dreggas

    November 15, 2007 at 12:04 pm

    Jon H Says:

    “It was lost on no one because violent crime went up three hundred and sixty-seven percent between 1960 and 1980. ”

    Hm. What happened between 1960 and 1980…

    Anyone know any estimates for the number of Vietnam vets convicted for violent crime in this period?

    No but a lot of previously legal drugs were made illegal and we know that led to violent crime..

  25. 25.

    demimondian

    November 15, 2007 at 12:21 pm

    I was going to produce a long and carefully cited document showing what James Elliot already said, but he’s beaten me to it. Roughly, people who are “white and non-Hispanic” have about two thirds the per capita public assistance use rate of the rest of the country, whether you measure it by use of food banks (e.g. America’s Second Harvest), AFDC, WIC, or other similar intervention programs.

    However, that’s a complete whitewash, because it ignores the single largest anti-poverty program in the world, which runs here in America — and works. We call it “Social Security and Medicare”, and, interestingly, disproportionately many of its welfare queen recipients are…white and non-Hispanic.

  26. 26.

    Tom Hilton

    November 15, 2007 at 12:23 pm

    We still have a costly welfare bureaucracy that caters more to minorities than to whites

    Okay, the statistical part of this has been pretty well blown out of the water…but “caters more to minorities”? WTF? Is he trying to claim that the welfare system is skewed in favor of non-whites?

    Oh, and costly? Based on a quick search, AFDC was something like 1% of the total budget (need to spend some more time searching to get better numbers, but that’s ballpark).

  27. 27.

    The Other Steve

    November 15, 2007 at 12:30 pm

    Is this accurate? I had assumed (perhaps because I am from West Virginia), that there were FAR more whites on social services than minorities. Are we talking about percentages, or real numbers, or what?

    There are far more whites on public assistance than minorities.

    The problem is that liberals supposedly concerned about poverty only talk to minorities, and thus they create the perception.

  28. 28.

    jcricket

    November 15, 2007 at 12:33 pm

    No but a lot of previously legal drugs were made illegal and we know that led to violent crime..

    I think Radley Balko has spent some time with the effects of the “War on Drugs” and the increase in related crime (and incarceration rates). If ever there was a misguided policy, it’s our war on drugs.

    I’m not arguing in favor of legalizing everything, but a smarter set of regulations (legalize some drugs, support safe injection rooms, redirect users to rehab instead of jail, punish big dealers more) would probably cut down crime and the related costs significantly.

    But that’s too pragmatic, doesn’t fit on the “drugs bad” label.

  29. 29.

    jcricket

    November 15, 2007 at 12:37 pm

    The problem is that liberals supposedly concerned about poverty only talk to minorities, and thus they create the perception.

    Really? It’s liberals that are to blame for the perception of welfare being an unfair handout to minorities?

    It’s liberals that support ending welfare, decreasing aid to the poor, etc?

    I’m fine with the idea that liberals themselves don’t have an accurate perception of just how many poor white people there are. For example, jewish agencies regularly put out communications showing how many poor (white) jews there are, to counter the perception that Jewish people are all rich and don’t need any help.

    However, I don’t think it’s liberals that are to blame for any misguided notions about poverty in this country. Demonization and portrayal of poor people (welfare queens/cheats, etc.) is the province of Republicans, and has been for a long time.

  30. 30.

    scarshapedstar

    November 15, 2007 at 12:37 pm

    I’m guessing he’s saying that the percentage of Minority America on welfare is higher than the percentage of White America on welfare, which is probably true, but tells you nothing about the program and is therefore pretty misleading.

  31. 31.

    Nylund

    November 15, 2007 at 12:40 pm

    Although not an accurate measure of “welfare” I just checked some data for Food Stamps (2002 USDA Study). In their study, they estimated the population of blacks to be 11% of the total population, and non-blacks to be 89% (which sounds off to me).

    Out of that total population, some were eligible for food stamps. Out of those eligible, 20% were black and 80% were non-black. Meaning a disproportionate number of black people qualified for assistance.

    Out of those that were eligible, only some actually took part in the program. Out of those 33% were black and 66% were non-black. So out of people who qualified for assistance, blacks were more likely to use the program than non-blacks.

    In short, there are more white people using food-stamps, but its disproportionate to the actual population. In other words, even though blacks make up only 11% of the population (according to this study’s numbers), they account for 33% of the people on foodstamps. A black person is statistically more likely to use food stamps than a non-black person, but overall more non-black people use foodstamps.

    Also note that the designation is black vs. non-black (not black vs. white).

    I have NO IDEA how these results compare to other assistance programs. I just stumbled across this study first.

  32. 32.

    RSA

    November 15, 2007 at 12:55 pm

    Is this accurate?

    This is a side point, but if I’m looking at the same numbers and interpreting them correctly, this is wrong:

    violent crime went up three hundred and sixty-seven percent between 1960 and 1980.

    The 367% increase applies to the raw numbers of violent crimes, not normalized by population. Per capita, it went up about 270%. Still a lot, but not quite as much. (It’s also possible that Ross is converting x% of something to “going up x%”, but that’s probably too elementary a mistake to make.)

  33. 33.

    Xenos

    November 15, 2007 at 1:25 pm

    We still have a costly welfare bureaucracy that caters more to minorities than to whites

    If we stipulate for the purposes of argument that this is true, what is the problem? Why shouldn’t poverty programs cater to a distinct, historically oppressed minority?

    There is something pretty creepy about this choice of language by Douthat. But then, he tends not to think very deeply about awkward things that complicate his pet theories.

  34. 34.

    Redleg

    November 15, 2007 at 1:34 pm

    But corporate welfare is around 85% white.

  35. 35.

    r€nato

    November 15, 2007 at 2:06 pm

    anecdote which, hopefully, is indicative of something:

    a few years back I accompanied the then-girlfriend to Milwaukee, where she grew up.

    Went to visit high-school friend of hers and her husband. Both blue-collar white people. Husband was on total disability and didn’t work, even though all I could see was wrong with him was a slight gimp.

    A couple hours into the visit – since we were all white folks, I guess he thought it was OK – husband goes off on a rant about, ‘the goddamned lazy niggers on welfare.’

    In the minds of lots of white people, welfare is only used by lazy black people… even in the minds of lazy white people on welfare.

  36. 36.

    Mike

    November 15, 2007 at 2:18 pm

    Hm. What happened between 1960 and 1980…

    Lots and lots of Baby Boomers were the ages most prone to commit violent crimes.

  37. 37.

    James F. Elliott

    November 15, 2007 at 2:35 pm

    But corporate welfare is around 85% white.

    Bravo, Redleg!

  38. 38.

    just me

    November 15, 2007 at 2:35 pm

    What happened between 1960 and 1980…

    What Mike said.

    Those most likely to commit crimes of any sort are those between the ages of 16 and 30 something (don’t recall the exact number). But if you look at the stats right around 1960 is when the baby boomers started hitting their teen years.

    As the babyboomers aged out of the “most likely to commit a crime” cohort, the crime rates started to go down.

  39. 39.

    Davis X. Machina

    November 15, 2007 at 2:40 pm

    It’s hard not to hear in the background the unstated argument that if the poor were ever majority non-white, or disproportionately non-white, it would be o.k. for them to freeze in the dark.

    I thought that the major cause of poverty in America is not having very much money.

  40. 40.

    binzinerator

    November 15, 2007 at 3:11 pm

    Another problem with the statistics is, well, what do you mean by ‘welfare?’

    If you gain some financial benefit from the government and you’re not white, it’s called welfare. It means you’re lazy and you think everyone else owes you.

    If you gain some financial benefit from the government and you’re white, it’s called getting some of your taxes back. It means you earned it, and you think the government owes you.

  41. 41.

    PaminBB

    November 15, 2007 at 4:19 pm

    The rise in crime seen beginning in the sixties certainly seems to be due in significant part by the baby boomers. However, one of the explanations for the drop in the nineties was legalized abortion, as argued by Levitt and Dubner:

    http://freakonomicsbook.com/thebook/ch4.html

    The gist is that the most violence-prone (poor, unwanted) were never born. The same reasoning might apply to a drop in the rolls of welfare recipients – likely candidates for welfare were never born.

  42. 42.

    F

    November 15, 2007 at 6:28 pm

    John,

    For one of the few times I agree with you.

    I grew up in NYC where the term minority usually meant Black, so whenever welfare was discussed on TV and the station needed a visual they usually flashed a black face, so everyone assumed the term welfare queen meant a black woman. However, when I was stationed in Oklahoma the term minority usually meant American Indian guess which face they flashed on TV when they discussed welfare, so guess what they call a welfare queen in Oklahoma. (Pocahontas)

    The US population consist of over 320 million people;

    Non-hispanic whites: Approx. 170 million
    Everyone else (black, hispanic, etc.): Approx. 150 million

    Why is it when white people by far are the largest portion of our population, minorities are the ones demonized whenever there is a need to attack a government program. Final quiz for everyone, until 1990, which country provided the largest number of immigrants (legal and illegal) to the NYC area?
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    Hint: One of the reason why until recently Peter King (R) Long Island did not much care about immigration or terrorism.
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    Ireland.

    F

  43. 43.

    ChristieS

    November 16, 2007 at 10:05 am

    Haltelcere Says:

    Does anyone have any statistics on the percentage of people who have previously received government assistance and are now self-sufficient vs. the percentage of people who have never ended their reliance on assistance? Would not the measure of a program’s success best be measured by the number of people successfully helped become independent instead of a strait number of people receiving assistance at a given time?

    Excellent idea, actually. I know Head Start had a website up asking for former participants to get in contact with them to let the program know how it did. I don’t know if there is any truly comprehensive census of these folks. It would be interesting to find out.

    I was a Head Start kid back in the mid to late 60s. My family received some AFDC after my father died. His social security benefits chipped in as well.

    As for “welfare queens,” that Reagan cannard was so much BS. It’s terribly elitist to believe that someone actually chooses to keep their family in enough abject poverty to qualify for these benefits. But hey, they can name the roaches in their hovels and call them pets, so that’s all right then. Eh?

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