But all the talk about “tort reform” (earlier in the chat) pisses me off:
Re: tort reform: Why have Dems been so slow to embrace things like tort reform, death tax reform, and preventing young bucks from buying T-bone steaks with their welfare checks?
Ben Pershing: I just covered tort reform. Dems haven’t pursued estate tax reform because they don’t want to give up the government revenue. As for T-bone steaks, I would personally fight any proposal that discouraged their purchase. I like steak.
[…..]re Tort Reform: The majority of experts agree that tort reform, while a worthwhile goal in itself, is fairly minor in its influence on health care costs. Those who seek reform include the AMA which has done a lousy job of policing it’s own membership with regard to malpractice. Fewer than 5% of physicians are responsible for the majority of malpractice claims. This more than anything else is what is driving increased malpractice insurance costs.
Also, the blatant racism of the earlier post needs to be called out.
Ben Pershing: I’m sorry, you are right. I should have read that question more closely. It was offensive and I shouldn’t have posted it.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
You’re going to get some poor underlevel WaPo writer fired, DougJ. For shame.
Kryptik
@The Main Gauche of Mild Reason:
Yeah. Why couldn’t you aim high and get Shailagh Murray fired instead?
The Grand Panjandrum
So are all “young bucks” of a non-white skin tone? Or is the implication that young bucks on welfare are not white?
Bo234
Since the young bucks buying T-bone steaks thing is directly from Reagan, did Ben Pershing just agree that Reagan was a racist?
You Don't Say
He replied to the stupid question so he read it.
And the second questioner is absolutely right about med mal. Someone has got to call out these effing Republicans who claim all the world’s ills are due to med mal suits. It’s absurd, does nothing to address real costs and the real problem of incompetent doctors, and makes villains of truly injured folks.
Alex S.
this must be a typo: it’s “blacks”, not “bucks”
/troll
jibeaux
“young bucks”? who talks like that? is the WaPo chat a secret gay porno chat room, like when Dunder Mifflin’s website got a chat feature?
And are there really people who think we need anti-T-bone-steak-with-welfare legislation? I mean, unlike conservatives, I’m pretty optimistic about the ability of government to be used as a tool for good public policy, and even I don’t want them telling people they can’t buy a steak with their money, I don’t care where it came from. You wanna spend your food stamps on beans and rice 6 days a week so you can have a t-bone on Sunday with your special friend buck, I ain’t gonna rain on that parade.
Cat
@The Grand Panjandrum:
I’ve not heard “young bucks” used to describe young white males. Its probably been a decade or two since I’ve heard it used to describe young black males.
Its one of those “dog whistles”.
Liberty60
Tort reform is the latest excuse for spiraling medical cost.
Since we begin with the premise that the marketplace is perfect, any result that is adverse must be the fault of not enough market forces.
Therefore, greedy lawyers are driving up medical costs.
QED
Likewise, the government is spending beyond its means. Since we begin with the premise that defense spending is sacred, the $1.4 Trillion deficit must be caused by young black men buying T-bone steaks with their girlfriend’s welfare checks.
And haven’t we all known someone who passed away, and then the greedy government stormed in and confiscated the family farm, even before the wake? Since we begin with the premise that all taxes are inherently evil…..
SpotWeld
Isn’t welfare usually a state administered program anyway?
jenniebee
Nice one, DougJ. Did you do both parts?
DonkeyKong
Tomorrow, Obama will work “preventing young bucks from buying T-bone steaks with their welfare checks” into his SOTU hoping to get bipartisanship off the ground under President Brown.
DougJ
Nice one, DougJ. Did you do both parts?
Just the first one.
Zifnab
@Bo234: Haha, that’s what it looks like to me. Not exactly “news”, but definitely man bites dog if it’s coming from a WaPo editor.
I’d say abolishing Medicare Advantage will do more to alter insurance premiums than anything accomplished via tort reform. Big firms were really milking the government teet on that one, and their CEOs are going to have to work hard to recover all the lost revenue.
All that “Don’t cut Medicare!” bullshit from the GOP has been about preserving the massive costs of privatization under Reagen, the Bushes, and Clinton. Tort Reform doesn’t have anything to do with saving money and has everything to do with class warfare between doctors and their patients.
Citizen_X
@jibeaux: Who talks like that? As pointed out above, Ronald Fucking Reagan. It’s practically a direct quote, and is a textbook example of a racist dogwhistle.
And I thought the original question was packed so full of right-wing talking points that it was coming from one of us snarky lefties.
licensed to kill time
As I recall, that was “strapping young bucks”
heh – good one, DougJ
AhabTRuler
Really people should avoid T-bones in general.
You’ll only end up overcooking the tenderloin.
Michael D.
Actually, I live in an area where there a lot of “Young Bucks” (and Does) – both black and white – who use their Georgia EBT (electronic benefits transfer) cards to buy the most insane things ever. T-Bone steaks included – although less things like that than potato chips, Coke, donuts, and general junk food that no one should be buying in any quantity when they have to use “the system.” I shop in a VERY poor area of Atlanta, and to see what is on the grocery carts of some people makes me want to scream.
Also, a lot of the people using these cards are wearing clothing much nicer than me – nice leather jackets, jewelry, shoes. Of course, that might be more of a reflection on my [lack of] style than anything. Also, nice thousand dollar rims on the car, and gorgeous tricked-out Honda civics to boot.
Finally, in Georgia, you can get cash back on your food stamp cards. I wonder where that money goes?
So, the Young Buck comment may have been racist. I wouldn’t know because I wouldn’t presume to know the author’s intent. But his or her larger point is correct if the subject is food stamps. It’s ridiculous how much of that taxpayer money is going to things that are unnecessary.
slag
I disagree with Pershing. He should have posted the question. And called out the racism.
And your information about tort reform corresponds to my information about tort reform. Thanks for putting it out there!
PurpleGirl
@SpotWeld:
Yes, it is but some of the money comes from the Feds, as Food Stamp programs are state-run but paid for by the Feds. But Rethugs do not acknowledge that the rules really are enforced quite stringently as to who gets what and that the rules are determined by each state. (In fact the food stamp rules can even be determined by cities… for example, NYC’s food stamp rules differ from NYS as a whole.)
low-tech cyclist
At least they called it “tort reform” rather than “malpractice reform.”
I’m all for medical malpractice reform – medical malpractice is a serious problem, and there are many things the medical profession could do in the way of having good standardized procedures to make sure that they didn’t, say, amputate the healthy leg instead of the diseased leg. Or perform the right operation on the wrong patient.
But the phrases “malpractice reform” and “medical malpractice reform” have inexplicably come to mean limiting the extent to which victims of medical malpractice can find remedies in the legal system. It’s positively Orwellian.
Chyron HR
@Michael D.:
Gracious! Those strapping young bucks should subsist upon water and the crusts of our bread, and be grateful for it!
Not clean water, of course. What are you, some sort of communist?
slag
@Michael D.: Wow, Michael D. Could you work a little harder to resurrect the welfare queen stereotype for us?
Lemme tell you a little something about your assessment of what your fellow grocery-shoppers are wearing. You don’t know where they got their clothes. They could have picked them up at Saks or at The Goodwill. You don’t know. Same goes with the cars. But you make assumptions as if you did know. And that pisses me off more than a little.
Michael D.
@Chyron HR: Is this even a serious comment?
I’m not saying that people shouldn’t buy the occasional twinkie. I’m saying that milk, bread, eggs, pork, ground beef, potatoes, carrots, lettuce, juices, cheese, butter, flour, corn, green veggies, etc, etc are things that should be bought.
Kids that eat these types of things do MUCH better in school.
DougJ
FYI on strapping young bucks buying T-bones, people.
I guess we have to add this one to the lexicon.
Jon O.
I do think it’s pretty striking that he makes no effort to acknowledge the important part of the second person’s question (re: tort reform’s ineffectiveness) and instead just focuses on the Reagan satire.
Michael D.
@slag:
Yeah, I figured I’d get (several) comments like this. But it’s what I see every day at my grocery store – which is the Kroger at the corner of Moreland Avenue and Confederate in Atlanta, for those who want to know.
But I guess I’m not allowed to say what I observe every day.
EDIT: I’m not trying to ressurect a welfare queen stereotype, by the way. I’m just saying what I see. Just like I am more than willing to admit that I observe a lot of very femmie gay people – a stereotype that is true in a lot of cases! Welfare abuse is not just something that happens on the margins. It’s common.
But we are not allowed to say that because an inordinate number of people on welfare are minorities – which makes mentioning anything people on welfare do that is wrong objectionable and, of course, very racist.
Cat
@Michael D.:
/facepalm
slag
@Michael D.: You’re allowed to say what you observe. And I’m allowed to call you a jackass for saying it. This is America.
Chat Noir
@DougJ: You’re bad. But by all means, do not stop.
licensed to kill time
@DougJ:
Seconded – so many possible layers to this tag…
LittlePig
But I guess I’m not allowed to say what I observe every day.
It’s not the observation, it’s the cluck-clucking about folks lives you don’t know anything about. My next-door neighbor has an awesome, tricked-out car. He also repairs them for a living, and gets parts discounts and puts them on himself. Doesn’t cost him diddly to do so.
SapphireCate
@Michael D.: Just a thought… why begrudge someone pleasure just because they’re poor? Sounds awefully puritanical to me. Also:
http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/the_link_between_conservatisms/
Zifnab
@Michael D.: Wow, spoken like a true conservative, Mike.
“These people aren’t eating healthy enough. And look at their shoes! And their cell phones! Omg, cell phones! Furthermore, let me postulate the existence of a food stamp black market of unknown size or scope.”
You’ve got your nanny-state inspired allegory, your whiny assertion that people on food stamps are getting a free ride, and a solid criminal conspiracy based entirely on evidence made up in your head. St. Ronny smiles on you today, Mikey D.
Seriously, are there problems with the food stamp program? Absolutely. But let’s not talk about Farmer’s Markets or Community co-ops or jobs programs. Let’s whine and bitch at the guy with the fake gold earrings and the rhinestone baseball cap for failing to adhere to the South Beach Diet.
You and Andrew Sullivan will make a fabulous couple.
Phyllis
@Michael D.: Andre, is that you?
Cat
@Michael D.:
I’m sure you took careful histories to make sure they bought all those nice things while on welfare or do you believe they should sell off all of their stuff while on welfare?
Violet
@Michael D.:
Ditto. But the corn lobby isn’t going to be happy if their foods are disallowed for food stamp recipients.
What really should be happening is that fresh and frozen veggies and fruit should be encouraged or required somehow. Card technology is pretty smart these days. Seems like a percentage of the monthly allotment could be required to be used for health foods like fresh fruits and vegetables. Donuts and other crappy foods shouldn’t be completely disallowed, but perhaps a penalty or restriction on the amount spent on them should be enforced. You only get $15/month to spend on crappy sweet stuff. You choose how it’s spent – or something like that.
I know, I’m living in some kind of pie in the sky world but really, it doesn’t take that much longer to cook a meal than it does to get in the car, drive to McDonald’s and order, and drive back. If we’re giving away money so that people can buy food, it would also be smart to find a way to help the food be good for them.
cfaller96
Howie Kurtz tells me that some say the WaPo has a left-leaning editorial page…so I’m shocked, shocked, to find angry conservatism seeping into that fine, upstanding newspaper.
/Satire is dead
Paul in KY
You wouldn’t believe the high priced stuff I get at a consignment shop up in Louisville for next to nothing. I don’t shop retail anymore (clotheswise).
Sure, the dude may have died in it, but that’s a Giorgio Armani silk blazer for $15.00! (note: for some reason, the commenting software does not like multiple exclamation points).
Riffing off other people’s comments that you can’t tell where someone picked up their ‘young buck’ threads.
Rock
It would be interesting to see actual data about the living conditions and affluence of welfare recipients across the country. Personally, I have hard time believing that very many are kicking it in style. I’m sure there’s fraud, as there is in almost any financial project (you know, even private sector firms get defrauded — shocking).
I’d also love to see welfare fraud (or even just misspent aggregate welfare money) stacked up against a full accounting of both defense contractor fraud, giveaways of public natural resources to corporations, and tax fraud. I wonder what problem is the worst?
chopper
@Zifnab:
see, if you complain about people eating all sorts of bad stuff, you’re a liberal. if you complain about people on foodstamps eating all sorts of bad stuff, you’re a conservative.
PurpleGirl
Michael D.: Do the cashiers ever not accept the food stamps in payment for items that are not allowed to be bought, cause when a friend visited me in NYC and used his California EBT card he couldn’t buy soda and devil dogs and chips with the EBT. Those items he had to pay cash for.
And as to the clothing people wear: I’m currently unemployed. By your thinking should I not wear my good clothes bought when I was working, should I get worn, tattered clothes to look like I’m down on my luck? Should I hide and not use jewelry, again bought when I was working? Paul in KY reminds me to mention that my friend has gotten Armani clothing in thrift shops. Again, you can’t tell where someone bought something just by looking.
Zifnab
@Michael D.:
Someone’s abusing how government spends money! Man, it’s a good thing we don’t go after the military contractors or the prescription drug companies. like we go after a 30-something mother of two in Atlanta, Georgia.
Next week, Micheal D goes after that guy who took too many pennies out of the take-a-penny leave-a-penny tray, in the middle of a bank robbery.
LittlePig
which makes mentioning anything people on welfare do that is wrong objectionable and, of course, very racist.
Are you similarly concerned about wasted defense spending, which is about 100x the amount of the welfare money you are so annoyed about? Because throwing away billions on systems that don’t work (Patriot missle system, anyone?) to rich defense contractors bothers me a whole lot more than giving a few dollars to people that cannot afford to eat.
Zifnab
@chopper: Well, shit. If it’s my tax dollars paying for it…
They’re just peasants after all. I don’t see why picking on them is such a big deal.
AkaDad
It would be nice to see a journalist say there’s no such thing as a death tax. I know, I’m a dreamer.
chopper
@Michael D.:
shrug. i worked a register at a grocery store for years as a teenager and saw all manner of crap being bought with stamps. and yes, i did see women in crazy jewelry and fur coats buying food with foodstamps, that was a bit of a headscratcher. then again, i also saw tons of people buying regular food with stamps too.
WIC was really the best because only certain stuff could be bought with the vouchers. that was pretty cool, although i can’t count how many times i had to stop everything and tell some woman that she couldn’t get lucky charms with a WIC coupon and point her to the cheerios.
i wouldn’t say it was a racial thing. mostly just your average american eating just as crappy on foodstamps as they would paying with regular money.
Comrade Dread
Nice spoofing, Doug, but you forgot about the pressing issue of school uniforms.
slag
@PurpleGirl:
Only if you want to be considered respectable and worthy of the Nobleman’s pity and patronage.
Mike Toreno
If the cost of health care is a general social problem, why is it the responsibility of people injured by incompetent doctors to bear the burden of reducing the cost?
Violet
@PurpleGirl:
In my state they can be used to buy any type of food. Alcohol is not allowed, nor things like vitamins or pet food. Any other type is allowed.
Prepared foods are excluded, so you couldn’t use it at a hot dog stand, for instance. But you could buy the hot dogs, buns and coke separately and cook them yourself.
Jack the Second
Eating bad is usually cheaper than eating good.
A bag of Doritos will have between 1500 and 2000 calories in it, for around 3-4 dollars.
A can of veggies (cans typically being the cheapest) has about 250 calories per can; you can probably find some generic veggies for about a dollar a can.
So for $4 you can buy 2000 calories of junk food, or for $8 you can buy 2000 calories of healthy veggies.
Feeding the poor various forms of processed corn (most junk food basically being the same thing) is surprisingly cost-effective; as a side benefit, it keeps the KCA happy.
Tim Cooper
Let me just throw something into the mix.
I lived for a time in a town by the name of La Grande in eastern, very rural Oregon. The town is very white, very right wing, pretty much the exact demographic you would think of.
The local Boise-Cascade mill was working at about 30% capacity at the time and so there were a lot of people out of work and plenty who had been out of work for over a decade, thus lots of people on the same type of EBT program here.
And I saw the exact same behavior Michael describes, just think humongous Trucks instead of chrome wheels.
In this state the average Wellfare recipient is a white, rural, high-school graduate. And again, the behavior is visibly similar.
mistermix
I have a good friend who works with an urban, services-reliant community. Many of these people need every service they can get, and more.
Some of them just work the program to get side-benefits. For example, you can get a couple of hours of free daycare if you say you’re depressed and go to counseling services. But there’s no cross-check between daycare and the counseling office, so some clients only attend the bare minimum of counseling sessions so they can get some free daycare.
That’s a minor example. There’s also the use of ambulances as taxis, bullshit disability claims, and so on. My friend is extremely sympathetic yet often frustrated with the waste, fraud and abuse in the system.
It is possible to wonder why people who are well-dressed and driving nice cars are on food stamps without being a hater and a racist. My friend notes that the cheapest cellphone in the room is always hers, for example, and wonders why someone on Medicaid has a $100/month smartphone plan.
We have a very stupid dialog about poverty. One side talks about welfare queens. The other side just talks down anyone who wants to have an honest conversation about it.
Cat
@Violet:
Having never been on foodstamps this sounds dumb, but do they actually get enough money to be able to afford fresh fruit and fresh veggies? They are kind of expensive and while nutritious don’t provide a lot of calories.
RedKitten
Is there welfare abuse? Sure. Is it the biggest rip-off of your tax dollars? Hell, no.
I remember someone once bitching to me about seeing a homeless guy wearing new Nikes. How did he know they weren’t given to him by the Salvation Army? How did he know that he didn’t find them at a thrift store for $2. I’m currently wearing a cashmere sweater that I got for $1.25 at the thrift store (tags still on!). Yes, there is welfare fraud, but I find this “poor people shouldn’t have ANYTHING nice” attitude really alarming. They’re already down, why do we want them to have the added humiliation of being dressed in rags?
cfaller96
I didn’t want to participate, but now I feel I have to add my $.02: Zifnab and LittlePig are right. Michael, if you’re going to express concern about curtailing misuse of government fraud, welfare recipients are waaaaaay the f–k down the list of targets.
I understand this post kindasorta makes us turn towards the topic of welfare reform, but even turning to that topic in and of itself represents a capitulation to Republican narrative/framing/governance. In the grand scheme of things, Michael, welfare reform should NOT be a huge priority right now, and thus shouldn’t even be worth discussing right now.
Just a thought.
PurpleGirl
@slag:
LOL.
MikeJ
Could you find an insurance plan to replace Medicaid for $100/month?
Tsulagi
@Michael D.: Plasma screens. Don’t forget the huge plasma screens.
Violet
@Jack the Second:
Yep and this is a big problem with my “require fruits and veggies” suggestion. It’s way more expensive to eat healthily.
But then there’s beans and rice. Bought in bulk they’re filling and relatively good for you. Add some cheap veggies or fruit and that’s a pretty healthy meal. A bag of Doritos may have the calories, but they’re not really going to fill you up all day – and 1500 to 2000 calories is pretty much a day’s worth of calories.
It’s a complicated issue and involves food policy on all sorts of levels.
cfaller96
Jack the Second, one time my buddies and I decided to try and find the item with the highest ‘calorie/dollar’ ratio. It was generic mac n’ cheese: for $.29, you got like 800 calories (without the milk), so it converted to upwards of 2700 calories/dollar. Not even $2 lard could compare to that.
Violet
@Cat:
I don’t know the specifics from state to state, but the high cost of fresh fruit and vegetables is a definite problem. But then there are costs to people eating spongy white bread and potato chips just to get filled up too, as it’s terrible for their health and those costs aren’t zero.
It’s a huge problem involving food and agricultural policy. I’d say go see Food, Inc., which is a fantastic film, but it is very depressing when you see what you’re really being fed.
mistermix
@cfaller96:
I don’t agree. I think we can have a productive discussion about poverty at anytime, and I think some of the Clinton-years welfare reform gets a bad rap. The programs that encouraged women in poverty to work by providing daycare, not limiting benefits just because they made a few bucks, and allowing them to use their earnings as discretionary spending were huge.
They were more expensive, and therefore didn’t last long. But they were a step in the right direction.
PurpleGirl
@Tim Cooper:
Again, are these things they bought when they were working full time? Should they have to sell or otherwise get rid of nice things because they have experienced economic dislocations?
Violet:
I don’t know the exact NYC/NYS (or California) rules but when my friend and I went shopping together I would see his items passed by the scanner and when he went to pay with the EBT card there was usually an amount in cash he had to pay. The whole bill was not taken off his card/account.
elmo
What a ridiculous question. Of course you should dress according to your station. If you’re unemployed, you are essentially a peasant and should dress accordingly. But mind that your worn clothes are clean, neat, and inoffensive to your betters. Wash your hands, paying careful attention to your fingernails. Clean your face and neck, and comb your hair. But no makeup, hair products, or fingernail polish until you rejoin the better classes, or once again, you’ll be putting on airs above your station in life.
Sheesh. Doesn’t anybody know the rules any more? Next you’ll be asking if you can look your betters in the eye when you talk to them!
jacy
@Michael D.:
Actually, statistically, whites receive more welfare than minorities. So why bring it up? Maybe a little scholarship would disabuse you of some of your “observations.”
I was on food stamps once, after my divorce, many years ago. I had two small children and two college degrees, but there was a year where I could not make ends meet. I drove a nice car, had nice clothes. But then again, I’m of Irish/Scandanavian descent and pretty pale, so I guess it was OK.
Didn’t your gram ever tell you about walking a mile in the other person’s shoes before you open your yap?
Respectfully, screw you.
rootless_e
beltane’s blues
wake up sheeple
sheeple wake up
Sheeple lives in a very bad part of town
where rahm puts my sheeple down
Sheeple we can’t play no chess in 11 dimensions
Cuz we’re under the bus looking at the suspension
and so I say now
John S.
Because then it’s more obvious that they’re poor! We can’t have the hired help running around looking like the rich folk, oh no, that wouldn’t do at all.
mistermix
@MikeJ:
One of the contributors to poverty is people buying shit they can’t afford, especially if they don’t need it. Nobody needs a smartphone.
If we can’t say that, then there’s no way to have a conversation.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
Has anyone seen the news reports about Baby Jesus .. I mean Tebow … at the Senior Bowl? It’s not going so well.
Brachiator
@Michael D.:
If it makes you feel any better, there are probably a bunch of bankers who took government bailout money and spent it on caviar, liposuction, breast implants, and of course, yachts.
And then there are gentlemen farmers who blow their farm subsidies on cocaine and whores. And the odd Southern governor jetting to Argentina on the people’s dime to hook up with his soul mate.
I’m not begrudging you your observations, but any number of people could be singled out for “should do this” based on their receipt of government benefits.
slag
@Violet:
Yeah. But as some have mentioned, this problem is an across-the-board cultural problem.
I, for instance, will be the first to admit that I don’t eat as well as I should and don’t exercise as often as I should. People ignore my behavior because I’m not poor and am relatively fit. People judge the poor and obese much more harshly. Not necessarily because of meaningful behavioral differences between them and me but because of circumstantial differences that can have a variety of causes. And have been scientifically proven to have a variety of causes.
Would I change my own behavior should I become poor or obese? I certainly hope so. But I also benefit from having an education and class background that gives me many options. Not everyone has that.
Bottom line: Substandard behavior is sometimes in the eye of the beholder. Some people should judge themselves more harshly and judge others less so.
Church Lady
@Michael D.: Tennessee also uses EBT cards for food stamps, but you can’t buy some of the things you listed with it. When the groceries are rung up, the amount that qualifies runs through on the EBT card and the balance, for items that don’t qualify, has to be paid for in some other manner. The only time I get annoyed is when the purchaser asks the checkout person to start removing stuff from the total, since they don’t have enough to pay for all the unqualified items. Unless they are new to the program, they should know what does and does not qualify for purchase under the Food Stamp program.
Michael D.
Sorry. I forgot the rule.
Must. Only. Criticize. Wealthy. White. Republican. Men.
goposaur
who the heck cares what people buy with their food stamps? Far as I’m concerned a t-bone is a damn sight healthier than a box of cereal.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Violet: Are you willing to require that everyone in the US without exception follow a specific diet based around the nutritional goals of your choice? If not, then forcing those on welfare/food stamps to follow such a program is at best a type of parentalism that makes me throw up in my mouth. If these people have a demonstrable income need, then they’ve satisfied the requirement for getting food stamps. That should be sufficient. At that point we don’t need Michael looking into their shopping carts to see whether they’ve purchased what he feels they should purchase, and they don’t need a wardrobe check to see whether they are wearing clothes that are sufficiently shabby.
Of course, I’m the kind of guy who’ll give spare change to a drunk and not give him some bullshit about how he should use it to buy a good meal. Maybe what he needs right then is another drink. Not for me to decide.
batgirl
I have found that there is this rampant misconception that if we cut all government aid to the poor, brown and black people (the “unworthy”) that we (the “worthy”) can have our tax cut, full social security and medicare benefits, and all the defense money we need to fight the big, bad Mooslims.
licensed to kill time
I would just like to point out that there are always people who “game the system”, whether it’s unemployment benefits, disability payments, food stamps, banking regulations, filing taxes, etc. It’s an equal opportunity thing not limited to any particular ethnic group or race, unless you just say the “human race” or human nature in general.
WaterGirl
@Michael D.: Are you by any chance a wealthy, white Republican male?
slag
@Michael D.: Look in your own backyard first, asshole. Then go cruising around the hood bitching about others.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Michael D.: Oh, horseshit. But when your criticisms sound like a St. Raygun wetdream, people might comment negatively about it.
batgirl
@Michael D.: No, idiot. But if you are serious about controlling spending and deficit reduction, focusing on abuse in food stamps is inane. The only way you can seriously address the issue is to look at the untouchable “holy trinity”: medicare, social security, and defense.
When one focuses on food stamp abuse, it tells me that they are not serious in the solving the problem. They are only serious in blaming the problem on the other.
gex
@mistermix: We just need to be very careful about what luxuries we decide poor people don’t deserve. Cell phones seem to be necessary in today’s society. If you are job hunting, maybe.
A smart phone probably is helpful while job hunting, if you can be prompt in responding to email correspondence, for instance.
But I guess maybe if someone else deems it is a luxury, poor people ought not spend $200 on one. Perhaps poor people should have to use dial-up too. Broadband is a luxury. Some things are penny-wise, dollar foolish. Things that help you connect can seem luxurious, but they become necessary awfully fast.
rootless_e
I would like to point out that the do-nothing and pre-failed Obama administration has been attacking a primary source of wasted government funds: fraud on government contracts from medicaid to military. Under the Bush administration, there was no such thing, and Clinton’s DOJ was weak. Also the DOL has been very aggressively attacking pension fund and benefits fraud – a huge cost to the public when let grow.
aimai
Wow, amazing responses to Michael D. It boils down to this:
1) the plural of Michael D’s anecdote is not data.
2) real sociological information doesn’t arrive miraculously from squinting at a single viewer’s cart, or from imagining you know what’s in someone’s wallet by what’s on their car.
3) It is difficult, expensive, and complex to eat fresh vegetables and fruits.
4) The skill to transform whole grains and beans and poor people veg like cabbage, potatoes, and canned tomatoes is a lost art.
5) Sometimes poor people like to enjoy their food and they, too, fall for the glamor and the flavor tweaking that large corporations can place in the food itself, as well as in the settings in which food is eaten. Read the new research on the science and manipulation of processed foods and you will grasp that people are becoming addicted, against their knowledge, will or choice, by highly tweaked and manipulated foodstuffs. Good homecooking is increasingly going to be unrecognizable as well as unpalatable to the lower classes.
aimai
Tim Cooper
@PurpleGirl:
Completely valid point, and of course every situation is different. The point I should have explicitly made though is that the assumptions behind what is going on change as a matter of race. It’s like the “looting vs. salvaging” photos from Katrina. Nearly every EBT user in La Grande would be able to explain why and how those seeming extravagant purchases made sense.
Of course when it came to Hispanics or African-Americans many (but not all) could tell you how they should all be cut off….
beltane
@rootless_e: That’s better. Now if I could only learn to play guitar.
Jamie
looks like electing a black President allowed Republcans to be more honest about their racial attitudes.
Whispers
It’s cheaper to buy T-bone steaks at the grocery store than to eat at McDonald’s all the time.
Punchy
When did “young buck” become a racist term?
And isn’t it racist just to conclude that “welfare checks” must involve black people?
maus
@Zifnab:
What, those are faggoty liberal ideas! The conservatives want to “gift” the poor with recalled e-coli hamburger, not allow the poor to acquire higher quality meat and be healthier. Who cares if they got a (fictional) t-bone, if they can make it last for a few days, all the better.
Surely, poor to middle-classed whites NEVER eat nothing but meat and potatoes, like the idealized 50s. Of course, in their idealized times, blacks and whites were segregated and you never saw blacks eating steak. There’s the rub, i guess.
Violet
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
Well, no, I’m not supporting a requirement everyone in the US must eat certain things. Where did you get that idea?
We already do mandate how some people eat – kids for instance. School foods have changed in the last thirty years. There is a move to include healthier foods these days and eliminate things like soft drink machines from school campuses. So we don’t let the kids run wild at the supermarket with a food card and let them have whatever donuts or cookies they want for lunch. We try to provide good foods for them.
Why is the state allowed to decide what kids can eat and not make decisions elsewhere? Is it because they’re kids?
As far as food stamp recipients go, why don’t we allow them to use the money for cigarettes and alcohol? Maybe that’s what they “need.” Alcohol has calories and cigarettes are known to suppress appetite. So there’s an argument for allowing both of those. But those are not allowed. Why? Because we’ve deemed them not acceptable. According to someone upthread, their state disallowed some specific foods for food stamp recipients. So it’s already being some in some places, apparently.
Why is it deemed unreasonable to even discuss the idea that people receiving support from the government are subject to certain restrictions?
rootless_e
@Jamie:
However, a number of white “progressives” are in denial about their actual feelings. They are convinced that believing an obviously smart and tough President is an empty suit, naive, easily led, and unable to make simple logical choices is a result of their superior political analysis, not unconscious racism.
Jamie
from wikipedia
A derogatory term (primarily 19th C) for an African American male, the female counterpart being Wench.
rootless_e
@Punchy:
When did “young buck” become a racist term? Well, I think smart people always understood it to be racist, but it was generally understood well before 1970.
Thanks for asking.
slag
@slag: As a side note: I should also–more imperatively–wonder why I haven’t changed my behavior already. Or even why I developed my bad habits in the first place. I have the means and awareness to eat well and exercise daily. But I don’t do it. I wonder why…
Why doesn’t everyone?
Jamie
well,, Liberals want to win nicely and neatly, so they lose many games they should have won. Conservatives play to win, so they win games against Dems much more than they should based on the issues.
Josie
@rootless_e – Your comment #94 is so on target. It sums up beautifully what I have been feeling about the political climate for a long time and was unable to put into words.
Violet
@slag:
I agree that there are many causes and there are a whole bunch of cultural issues at play. Our food policy is a major player too. If corn products weren’t so cheap, people wouldn’t be buying so many of them and getting fat and sick off eating them.
I don’t disagree that poor people without an education are judged more harshly than rich people with the same behavioral problems. But then, why shouldn’t we encourage good behavior and discourage poor behavior? Why not encourage the eating of fresh fruit and vegetables in a variety of ways – community gardens, school gardens, cooking classes in schools, healthy school lunches, etc. As well as something like limiting the amount of junk food you can buy with food stamps.
I don’t see why it can’t all be considered. Helping people be healthy is a win for all of us.
Mike Toreno
When did “young buck” become a racist term?
In the 1800’s.
And isn’t it racist just to conclude that “welfare checks” must involve black people?
Yep.
I’m pretty sure that question was from DougJ, put in as a trick, that’s why the title to the post is “I feel a little bad about this”.
Zifnab25
@Michael D.: Good. You’re learning.
Evinfuilt
@Michael D.:
Well then. why don’t we subsidize healthy food instead of junk food and the feed that the “t-bones” ate.
Everything you listed that the “young buck” purchased is subsidized via corn. So all of those goods have an artificially low price, making them the cheapest form of caloric intake.
Corn subsidies = cheap junk food
Corn subsidies = cheap beef via corn feed
The main point, to be poor you’re basically forced to eat unhealthy foods, which leads to medical problems, which of course will keep you poor and out of work later in life. A wonderful cycle we have here.
The comment way up about looking at community markets and co-ops instead of the current subsidy and food stamp method should be seriously looked at beyond its few highly successful trials.
rootless_e
More Obama failure
http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2010/1/26/1096/06877
rootless_e
@Josie:
That observation got me banned from OpenLeft last year.
Violet
@Evinfuilt:
Yep. Take away the corn subsidies and beef becomes quite the luxury.
MikeJ
Have a copy of the Dictionary of Regional English (DARE)? It’s in the index, which is available online, but the four volumes that have the defs and origins are not. If someone happened to be in a library they could look it up.
But yeah, buck goes back to slavery days when a strapping young piece of property might be considered good breeding stock, and more importantly, something to keep away from the white women.
Jamie
rootless_e
there you go.
HIram Taine
I have a Georgia EBT card for food stamps, it looks like any other credit card, no one but the cashier knows what I use to pay since I don’t flash it around and a good percentage of them are on food stamps also, one in eight adults in the USA is on food stamps and one in four children.
I always buy store brand and generic foods where possible, don’t eat a lot of fresh veggies since I don’t have my own kitchen any more but I try to stay away from highly processed foods and HFCS. Basically I shop with the food stamps just as I would if it were my own money.
Oh, and I’m fish-belly white, male and perilously close to elderly these days..
Zifnab25
@Jamie: But Democrat victories tend to be a bit more pernacious. See the socialization of Europe and the US as examples. Reactionaries have had a he’ll of a lot harder time rolling back universal health care, education, and roads than liberals pushing civil rights and environmental protection laws.
slag
@Violet:
Agreed. One hundred percent. And if this conversation were about our universal cultural and political problems surrounding the food we eat, we’d be having a very different discussion. But instead, some of us use these discussions as opportunities to focus on THOSE PEOPLE (based on class, race, what-have-you). And not only is that behavior obnoxious, it undermines the broader, more complex issues at play. Which is counterproductive. And pretty jerky.
Jamie
Evinfuilt
hey, someone’s got to keep ADM in business. All that corn isn’t going to eat itself you know.
malraux
If a cell phone with data plan replaces a home phone + internet service, that’s not inherently a bad choice. It might be slightly more expensive, but its not ridiculously expensive relatively.
slag
@HIram Taine: Wishing you much better circumstances in the very near future!
Martin
Texas passed what was considered to be pretty solid tort reform at the state level. Their health care costs are among the highest in the nation. That should pretty much end the discussion right there.
Comrade Dread
This.
Food policy is killing us by making inexpensive the very kind of foods that are the least healthy for us.
You want to solve poor folks eating Twinkies and Doritos (and have some added benefit of helping to alleviate global poverty), reviewing (and ending) farm subsidies and tariffs would be a good start.
Church Lady
MichaelD made a simple observation about things he had seen in the check out line at a grocery store. Only those constantly looking for racism under every single bush would immediately scream “Racist” at him. Sadly, that seems to be the case here. I sincerely doubt that there is one single person here that, at some time or another, has not questioned the choices of others. It’s simply human nature.
It also defies logic to not think that there is a vast amount of waste and fraud in the food stamp program. There is, and everyone knows it. Recognizing that does not mean that one also doesn’t recognize how necessary the program is and what a God send it is for many people. I spend four hours a week at our local food bank, packing backpacks for school age children to take home for the weekend so as to ensure that they have food for the weekend. Many of these kids only daily meals are those they receive from the free lunch and breakfast programs at their schools.
However, it also stands to reason that if some of the waste, fraud and abuse in the food stamp system were able to be eliminated, then perhaps we could increase the benefits for those that truly qualify. Right now, average food stamp benefits are a whopping $22 per week, per person. You can’t feed anyone crap on that amount, much less good, fresh food.
My own random observation: Checking out at Kroger a few weeks ago, there was a well dressed woman in front of me, along with her two cute and well dressed children. Her purchase was for three 5 lb. boxes of cat fish filets, a sack of cornmeal, a couple of large bags of hush puppy mix and five deli containers of cole slaw. My immediate thought was that she was having a cat fish fry party. To my surprise, she pulled out a Tennessee EBT card to pay for it. All I could think was that if you need food stamps to pay for food, you don’t need to be entertaining people with the food you purchase with the public’s tax dollars. I don’t think that my reaction was much different than what others might think in the same circumstances, which boiled down to “WTF”.
Paul in KY
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle, I have read that St. Timmeh is having trouble today handling the snap from center & consistantly making good throws.
I’m a UK fan & as such I hate any Gator (Balloon Juice posters who happen to be Gators excepted), but I wouldn’t count him out just yet. He’s a fine athlete & I would think some of this stuff shouldn’t be too awful hard for a motivated athlete to pick up on.
I had left a post on MSNBC several days ago where I said he’ll find out his teammates might not love him so much when they find out how right-wing his leanings are (having to get along with well educated adult black males who have teams of people who will bring them up to speed on Timmeh’s ideas is a little different than leading kids). That said, if he turns out to be a kick-ass winner, your teammates can forgive a whole lot.
I read the scouts were wondering about the above, as well.
Evinfuilt
@Michael D.:
Well, we could do as you want and force all the poor people onto your Vegan diet. You again prove to be a nanny state Republican.
Complain about real issues instead of the ones you imagine in your head.
Remember November
I like torts and pies and cakes…no need to reform them.
jibeaux
@DougJ:
I learn something new every day here. Now I’m halfway convinced that at some point Reagan made a gay interracial porno. Possibly with that chimpanzee. Release the Bucky Tape!
MikeJ
@malraux: This is true. Every time we see someone with a WIC vouchers and something that looks too nice, we should really add the totality of their expenses. Make sure they’ve asked that TV lizard if they could get lower car insurance rates. Maybe they reuse paper towels to save money to pay for what we don’t approve of.
The point is, if we can’t tell at a glance what someone’s socio-economic station is, we’re entitled to a full and complete audit, any time day or night. And why don’t they come around and straighten up my lace while they;re at it? I’m already paying for it. Also, I could use a foot stool, too, also.
Jamie
Church Lady
Most folk who obsess on food stamps and use the word buck in a sentence have a somewhat archaic attitude towards racial relations. Just like St. Ronny.
Jeff Fecke
@Jack the Second:
This. It’s truly reprehensible to criticize poor people for buying the cheap, non-nutritious food the government subsidizes, rather than the expensive, nutritious foods that get no subsidies.
Xenos
For those born after 1980, this was part of the welfare queen schtick that Reagan trotted out on rubber chicken circuit while preparing his presidential run.
Apparently the term “strapping young buck” was a well established term in the deep south that specifically referred to young black men. There was no confusion at the time as to what racial group Reagan was talking about.
Edit: forgot the link which I can’t embed in this edit window.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,922113,00.html
rootless_e
@Church Lady:
Yes, I think it was Jesus who said: Don’t feed the poor too much, the shitty bastards need to get an effin job. From The Gospel of St. Ronald.
Josie
@rootless_e – Well, I guess some people just can’t stand the truth.
jacy
@Church Lady:
Oh, you’re quite wrong there. When I look in other people’s grocery carts by first thought is, “It’s none of my damn business.”
People can’t have parties now? What if it was a kid’s graduation? What if it was a wake? What if it was a family renuion? What if it was a wedding?
Oh, but people down on their luck can’t live like “normal” people, right? That offends your sensibilities.
The point is, you cannot know any other person’s personal circumstances. The one thing I have learned through good times and bad is that I don’t make judgements about things I can’t know the circumstances of. And my sincere hope is that others would not make judgements on my life without living it.
gwangung
It’s simply human nature to hate. It takes a better human to think twice. You’re being exceedingly lazy and dishonest not to demand better. Next straw man.
Huge in an absolute basis or huge in a percentage basis? They differ, you know.
It also stands to reason that, beyond a certain point, it costs MORE to eliminate waste and fraud than it saves. Have we reaced that point? HAVE YOU EVEN BOTHERED TO LOOK?
And your personal anecdote is a really rather stupid conclusion from far too little information.
More sloppy and loose thinking from you, Church Lady. I’m afraid that’s not surprising.
Liberty60
@Michael D.:
My mind is still on the articles about Leo Strauss and the neocons, so forgive me if see a linkage here between your criticisms of welfare recipients and the Randian/ straussian Ubermensch mentality.
Your criticisms have some validity- do some welfare recipients abuse the system? Of course, it would be absurd to suggest otherwise.
But there is a narrative that welfare recipients are morally suspect for accepting charity, and that taxpayers are morally superior Ubermensch who produce all the good things in society.
But that is fundamentally in contradiction with American thinking; America’s guiding philosophy is the premise that Ubermensche are non-existent, that ordinary common people can form a perfect union. We hold that the guy who cleverly works his way to wealth is still the equal of the guy who spends his welfare check on a 40 oz bottle of beer.
The Straussians and Randians have contempt and a rigid unforgiveness for weakness and foolishness; but America has historically been forgiving and generous with second chances for the ones who fail and stumble and finally find their way. This is why nearly every millionaire entreprenuer has gone bankrupt at some point.
Criticising poor people for acting in foolish ways isn’t so much incorrect as it is missing the point; The genius of democracy is that the mass of ordinary people who act in both foolish and wise ways will, in the long run, produce a better society than one that relies on the genius of a few elites.
Ordinary people are, well, ordinary. We are by turns foolish and wise, cowardly and noble. We accept that welfare recipients, like tax break recipents or government bailout recipients are, on individual cases, going to do foolish things; but by accepting and embracing the foolishness of the masses, we also get the benefit of their wisdom and nobility.
So easy on that strapping young buck at the Kroger; you may end up working for him someday.
Church Lady
@Jamie: I believe that MichaelD was picking up on DougJ’s use of the term in his query to the Post.
As an aside, I can’t believe that the idiots at the Post haven’t picked up on DougJ’s absurd questions yet! Either they get a lot of idiots writing in to the chats, or they are absolute fools.
Jamie
hell if you want waste fraud and abuse, look at the pentagon.
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/2009/03/03/on-pentagon-waste-just-give-it-to-us-straight.html
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Violet: I don’t disagree with your comments about our needing a more rational food policy in this country, or that we do something about regulating the way that agribusiness tunes certain cheaper foods to make them more desirable to the consumer, no matter whether that makes our overall diet less healthy. That’s what the tobacco companies did with cigarettes for years. I can’t see that some umbrella policy making us all eat a certain way would ever come to be.
Your comment about how kids food choices are beginning to be limited in some schools is true, but that limitation applies to all kids in school, not just poor kids. Poor kids don’t suffer additional an additional burden just because they are poor. The state has sold the idea (true or not) that it has an interest in determining how kids will eat in school because good nutrition gives a better chance for better learning.
That idea may apply to all citizens everywhere (healthy people make better citizens?), but so far there’s no sign that the FDA is going to go there. Making food stamp recipients carry an additional burden of being required to choose “acceptable foods” is discriminatory by definition. Bear in mind that most people who scrutinize the shopping baskets of poor people would recoil in horror if the poor were buying “good” foods.
Better food policy? Sure. More education about choices that are available? Sure. Rooting through shopping carts to see whether “those people” are buying what I think they should? Not so much.
licensed to kill time
This ought to be in the freeze frame post, but it has a funny food related line:
via Sully
Jeff Fecke
@Church Lady:
Well. Since you know so much about this woman, tell me, how many kids was she feeding? How big is her family? Was she frying up the catfish all at once, or did she intend to freeze some of it? (Did you know that there’s such a thing as a “freezer” which allows you to “freeze” food for weeks or months until you eat it?) Ditto the cole slaw. Do you know if her children were in from out of town? Do you know if she’s raising her children’s children? Do you know anything, or were you just making an assumption, one that led you to look down your nose at someone getting a few dollars a week, because she might — might — be daring to have friends over for a fish fry?
I’m all for getting rid of government waste — including welfare abuse. But we could eliminate every dime of welfare abuse and not come close to touching the amount of money wasted by the Pentagon, or by Ag subsidies. And yet the people who begrudge a poor person their $5 worth of cole slaw are usually the same people who don’t see anything wrong with supporting multibillion dollar giveaways to defense contractors or to large agricultural companies. I wonder why that is.
Xenos
@Church Lady: This is just another example how privileged, insular white people only mix with their social inferiors at the Piggly Wiggly and tend to massively misinterpret what they come across.
Poor people share food between households, at least they do if they have any sort of social capital within their community. It is fundamental act of positive social values, and is a critical aspect of maintaining food security. OK, so it does not quite jibe with the ridiculous middle-class assumptions built into the food stamps regulations. Big deal.
flukebucket
Oh yeah. That is the beauty of living in the South. You can hear the dog whistles.
Way down here in the land of cotton most everybody has seen a welfare recipient trade the dog food for hamburger meat because you can’t buy dog food with food stamps but you can feed the dog hamburger.
Just like the Haitian pact with the devil. True story.
WaterGirl
Where is our John Cole update?
Xenos
@flukebucket: Personally, I would be all for a “dog food stamps” program that ensured that all good pups ate fresh, wholesome meat on a daily basis. I can’t imagine a better use for our tax dollars.
Shell
Reagan and food stamps…
Wasn’t it under the Reagan administration they re-categorized ketchup as a vegetable?
BongCrosby
When I was a young Bongster in the U.S. Naval Reserve waaay back in 19mumblemumble, I spent two pointless weeks in Newport, Rhode Island.
One of the jobs I had during those two weeks was to take screws, which looked to be your basic, garden-variety type screws, remove them from the plastic bags they came in — each screw came one to a bag — and put them in their respective drawers in one of those compartmentalized screw, nut and bolt organizers. I was told that each screw cost $7.
The point is that people always seem to whine about what the po’ folk are doing with their gubmint handouts, but nobody ever seems to complain about DoD waste, which I guess would be of a magnitude many times that of welfare queens buying Rolls-Royces with their food stamps.
Church Lady
@gwangung: Gosh, you’re absolutely right – I obviously don’t have a clue. Unlike you, a bitter, bitter keyboard commando with venom dripping on every keystroke, I actually get out and do things, trying to make a difference.
Rather than encouraging others to vote for someone that they hope will somehow solve the problems they see (fat chance of that ever happening), and then constantly bitching because things don’t seem to be going the way I want, I do things like work at the food bank, help out at a local non-profit that puts on events at our local Target and Ronald McDonald Houses, do volunteer work for two other local non-profits and make a lot of monetary donations to groups that help the homeless and kids affected by HIV/Aids.
Yes, I hope constantly denigrating me makes you somehow feel better about yourself. Something should.
Ailuridae
@Michael D.:
EDIT: I’m not trying to ressurect a welfare queen stereotype, by the way. I’m just saying what I see. Just like I am more than willing to admit that I observe a lot of very femmie gay people – a stereotype that is true in a lot of cases! Welfare abuse is not just something that happens on the margins. It’s common.
Wait, aren’t you a scientist? Are you honestly claiming that your observations from your shopping experience at Kroger give you better insight into the rate of occurrence of welfare abuse than the actual data?
Bill Rutherford, Princeton Admissions
@Church Lady
“Rather than encouraging others to vote for someone that they hope will somehow solve the problems they see (fat chance of that ever happening), and then constantly bitching because things don’t seem to be going the way I want, I do things like work at the food bank, help out at a local non-profit that puts on events at our local Target and Ronald McDonald Houses, do volunteer work for two other local non-profits and make a lot of monetary donations to groups that help the homeless and kids affected by HIV/Aids.”
While looking down your nose at them? What a saint you are.
bemused
A friend who is a teacher & I were talking about the SC lt gov Bauer who made the incredible statements about not feeding strays. She said to get free/reduced lunches in school, Minn, the guideslines are pretty strict..a family of 4 couldn’t make more than about $14,000. She said that she knows there are families that won’t take advantage of the free lunch program out of embarrassment so those kids probably aren’t eating very well.
licensed to kill time
@Shell:
They tried to, was never implemented, after it was met with outrage from nutritionists and Democrats :)
Citizen Alan
@Martin:
Ditto Mississippi and Alaska. There is almost no correlation between aggressive tort reform and reduction in health care costs. The whole thing is just a boondoggle meant to benefit insurance companies (by reducing payouts) and medical providers (by essentially giving them a license commit malpractice with impunity).
The Moar You Know
@LittlePig: It’s called a chop shop, homes. My next door neighbor has the same set up. Best goddamn mechanic you ever met. Insurance pays for all the parts in the end. What the hell, say I.
Violet
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
That’s kind of my point, though. The government decides what all kids will eat at schools because the government is involved in it. The government isn’t telling people what to eat outside of the places it’s involved, but it does shape food decisions in those places.
So if the government gives out money for food via food stamp programs, why can’t it have a say in how it’s spent? In fact it does, as it won’t allow alcohol, tobacco, and in some states won’t allow the purchase of certain foods (allegedly). Why not limit junk food? Or offer a discount on vegetables and fruit?
Improved nutrition improves lots of things, from education results to behavior to health. The public has an interest in all of those things. So for those people whose food comes via government money (ie, food stamps), it doesn’t seem completely ridiculous to regulate how the money is spent.
gwangung
Yes, I am right. You certainly don’t have a clue when you judge on surface apperances.
You really don’t want to learn, do you? Even when the warning signs are looming large in your face. Clue: You’re not doing more than I am in the philanthropic area.
How about slowing down and think about what other people are saying, instead of trying to play your moral superiority card with people who’re doing as much, if not more, than you are?
slag
@Church Lady: Somebody should give you a medal. For being completely lacking in self-awareness while seeming to know exactly what other people are up to all the time. Does your clairvoyance extend to everyone? Or just everyone but you?
MikeJ
Or they view the chats as entertainment not education and pick the questions that help meet the goal of attracting viewers, no matter how stupid. (Final clause intentionally ambiguous.)
Ailuridae
@HIram Taine:
I’m outraged that you are on food stamps and have an internet connection.
jacy
@bemused:
oh, god, that Bauer comment was something else.
Full disclosure: we have 5 kids, two in college, one in the marines, and the small kids go to private school. And at the private school our children qualify for free lunch, which we gladly take advantage of.
They go to private school because down here in the South, the public schools are so bad that some classes only have one or two textbooks that kids have to take turns using. It’s awful.
So we bust our butts to pay for our children’s education, because that’s what parents do. My entire salary pays only for groceries and tuition. So, yeah, we qualify for free lunch and we take it. And if anybody wants to walk up to me and say that if we can afford to send our kids to private school we shouldn’t be taking free lunch, I will personally punch them in the neck.
I also have a car, which allows me to take my children to school, a cell phone, because we gave up the landline, and a nice computer with broadband, because I work online 12 hours a day, thus allowing my kids to go to college.
Luthe
Food access is a big urban policy issue, surprisingly. In addition to the high price of fresh food in urban areas, there are also problems with quality and availability. Most inner cities are “food deserts” where grocery stores are scarce and the fruits and vegetables available are just this side of rotten. In addition, most of the working poor lack the time, skills, and tools to prepare healthy meals. They default to processed foods because they are quick, easy, and filling, which is important when you are trying to stretch your food dollar as far as possible.
Changing American eating habits isn’t as easy as restricting what food-stamp recipients can buy or ending Agro subsidies. It will require education, land-use changes, and a lot of political will.
Flugelhorn
@Cat:
This…
…is horse shit. I have heard it my entire life and it in no way references race or color.
Zifnab
@jacy:
You are everything that is wrong with America. Why do you hate it so?
Citizen Alan
@Church Lady:
Many years ago, there was a letter that appeared in Ann Landers’ advice column from an outraged person offended by the sight of a woman buying a very large and expensive cake with food stamps. Several weeks later, Ann Landers printed another letter from someone who claimed to have actually been the woman purchasing said cake with food stamps and who explained that it was for her daughter’s birthday party. Her last birthday party, in fact, as the daughter was suffering from late stage leukemia and was not expected to live more than a few months.
I resolved then and there that I would never presume to judge the purchasing decisions of someone on food stamps. As far as I’m concerned, if you are able to prove to a fairly soulless bureaucracy that you are in fact poor enough to be entitled to food stamps, then I don’t give a damn what you spend them on. Even if someone is cheating the system outright, I still have more sympathy for them than than the crooks and thieves who dominate every part of our corporate and governmental society. A food stamps grifter, if cornered, will usually at least have the decency to feel guilty, as opposed to all the Wall Street pigs who cannot imagine how anything they did was wrong.
Laertes
Just stop it already. Can’t you see you’ve hurt Michael D.’s feelings?
slag
@Church Lady: And while we’re on the stereotyping bandwagon, I have to say that, based on what you’ve said here, you are the absolute archetype of the self-described “church lady”. At least you get points in the self-awareness department for that. For whatever it’s worth.
Laertes
@Citizen Alan:
Holy shit. THIS.
Zifnab
@Laertes: Are you suggesting that we leave
BritneyMike D alone?jacy
@Zifnab:
I’m a horrible, selfish person. I should be ashamed. :)
If only I had more free time to volunteer helping people so I could then judge everything they do to my exacting standards…… I’m sure I would feel so much better about myself!
Violet
@BongCrosby:
People do complain about that type of government waste, but one of the problems is you don’t see it (or think you see it) in front of you at the checkout counter at the supermarket.
Stories like yours, or the six-hundred dollar hammers or the thousand dollar toilet seats are legendary. But it’s hard to figure out how to tackle those sorts of problems. And they’re second or third hand (“someone on a blog I read posted that….”). They’re not right in front of you at the supermarket.
Does that make it right or even smart? No. We’d probably be better off trying to fix those larger problems. And it’s also not cool to beat up on poor people when they’re down.
But that doesn’t mean that when you see the drunk guy in front of you screaming at the checkout clerk because he can’t buy a case of beer with his food stamp card, and the rest of his basket is full of frozen french fries, soft drinks, hamburger buns, and frozen pizzas you don’t find yourself wondering if something isn’t working quite right.
MikeJ
For the people who really are concerned about the youngs bucks buying t-bones, why not take the food stamp challenge? The average benefit is $21/wk. That’s $3/day. Give it a shot. Live on that for a month or two.
tavella
Ramen is around the same; 15 cents a package (I used to find 10 for a dollar deals, but haven’t in a while), 380 calories.
Which is only part of what makes it complicated. I bake my own bread, so some days I have a turkey and lettuce sandwich on whole wheat bread. Which is healthy, and costs maybe a dollar. But when I do that, I then have to eat the rest of the bread or waste it (I don’t like the texture of once-frozen bread), use up the rest of the lettuce, eat the rest of the turkey before it goes bad in less than a week, and so on. I live alone, so that’s a lot of sandwiches and salads and toast in one week. One turkey sandwich requires a week’s worth of meal planning and refrigerator space.
Or I can pull a ramen package off the shelf and have lunch in 7 minutes for 15 cents.
bemused
@jacy:
My teacher friend (laid off) said our school district has pretty ancient textbooks. This school district is in rough shape financially. Our kids are grown so we don’t have any in school here now but I just can’t imagine what it’s like for parents who do.
Lt Gov Bastard Bauer seemed to think that giving free lunches to kids drives the school’s test scores down. Not only is he incredibly mean at heart but dumb as a rock too.
Cat Lady
Can’t we all just agree that everything really started to go to shit when Saint Ronald of Raygun was elected? That was the beginning of the end of our grand experiment in representational democracy, and the beginning of us little people scrabbling over the crumbs left over from the Corporate Pigs at the Government Trough.
I will not participate in judging people’s choices who have very few choices. I’ll save my outrage for more worthy assholes.
Citizen Alan
@jacy:
My first thought is usually “what the fuck are you doing with a loaded cart in the Express lane?!?” but otherwise, I agree with the sentiment.
Violet
@MikeJ:
Done it. It’s hard. At one point I actually qualified for food stamps based on my earnings, although I didn’t know it. I lived on what I earned, which was very little. I ate a lot of very cheap food. Meat rarely entered my house as it was too expensive. Saved my dollars for fresh vegetables. Ate lots of lentils and rice. Cooked almost everything myself. Took my lunch every day. No food went to waste – ate up all leftovers.
It’s hard and boring day in and day out. Did it for several years until things started looking up.
Ailuridae
@MikeJ:
I did this for eight weeks and it was “challenging” in Chicago even as someone who
1. Has no problems eating the same food every day for every meal
2. Has eaten a vegan diet in the past.
3. Works from home.
4. Has access to multiple conventional supermarkets, corner stores, Mexican supermarkets and Chicago’s best and cheapest produce market
Jason Bylinowski
I regret that I only have so much MEH to give to this argument.
Michael D says the things he says because he’s Michael D, he’s cultivated a reasonable conservative persona and he is all for sticking to it and whatever, you know, that’s fine. I don’t think he’s racist. He’s just a fairly cool gay sorta-conservative guy who as a natural result of these characteristics has to reconcile a lot of philosophical shit before he even gets out of bed. I only know what he has written in the last couple years, I don’t claim to know him in any real way at all, but I always did and still do see him as one of the most valuable people here because he’s opposition, but still willing to be civil. We need more Michael D’s, baby, yeah.
I am both FROM and OF the Dirtay South and I myself have seen some of these things he has described. It happens, and to the extent that I’m interpreting the evidence of my eyes correctly, it does kinda make you mad to see it. The difference is that I realize what a douchebag I typically am for even opening my mouth to ask you to pass the salt, so I sure as hell am not gonna try and hit you with some sort of podunk social analysis that is, by definition, no more than anecdotal (and therefore perfectly worthless) in the first place. So even though our first reactions to these sorts of encounters is probably identical, I think we internalize them differently, and that in itself is valuable to me just as a way of encapsulating the difference between liberalism and conservatism.
So thanks for the perspective, Michael D, and now shut the fuck up and get that dogshit off your shoe. ;)
tl;dr: Meh. Still a Michael D fan. But he needs to realize the world is bigger than the one he sees.
Laertes
MikeJ: To be much more fair to the young-buck-minders than they deserve, their point, such as it is, is that if you’re buying t-bones with your food stamps, you don’t need the food stamps.
One suspects that that’s just the top layer of what’s going on, however. What’s really going on is the natural revulsion of a reactionary who perceives a violation of the hierarchy–of someone stepping out of their place.
Government waste by high officials doesn’t offend the sensibilities so much, since these are perceived as one’s betters. But when someone below one’s station, especially if they’re helpfully marked as such with a darker hue or certain modes of speech, wears clothing or buys food that’s a better grade than one’s own, that’s an attack on one’s own position in the hierarchy and it will produce immediate and strong feelings of resentment.
Violet
@jacy:
At least you’re looking. On a recent supermarket trip I accidentally grabbed someone else’s cart because I wasn’t looking. And then later in that same trip someone took my cart by mistake. Lots of not looking going on that day.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Flugelhorn: You ain’t from around here, then, old son.
tavella
That’s another thing Michael D. is overlooking — you tend to notice and remember the one person buying ridiculous food, and not the 10 buying lentils and rice. I’m blanking on the psychology term for it, though.
licensed to kill time
@Flugelhorn: Well, I have read the term in novels (think Jane Austen) set in the 18th-19th century to refer to a handsome dandified aristocratic young man, i.e.
but it’s a rather archaic usage. The “strapping young buck” is pretty much dog whistle for big blackity black guy.
cfaller96
Actually, yes. You want to know why, jackass? Because wealthy white Republican men have been the authors of a lot (if not all) of the serious problems we’re dealing with right now. Prioritization is a virtue, not a sin, and we have finite resources in allocating time and energy to a problem. Every minute spent clucking about minorities’ spending habits is a minute not spent clucking about (for example) Blackwater’s and Wall Street’s behavior. When it comes to controlling government spending and eliminating waste and fraud, which is a bigger problem for America, Michael? Thought so.
Identifying the root cause of a problem and then prioritizing corrective energy towards that root cause is a good, practical way to solve a problem. So if you get pissy about people pointing out that your prioritization is screwed up, then you’re telling the world you’re not very serious or competent about solving problems. Good luck with that.
Maude
@Violet: Food stamps do not pay for taxable items. Some EBT cards have a cash account on them from, for instance, Social Security or cash assitance.
Just because someone is poor, doesn’t give you the right to say what that person can or cannot eat. Eat rice and beans yourself 7 days a week.
Punishing people because they are poor is not what the baby Jeebus wants.
Jason Bylinowski
@tavella: erm. selection bias, maybe.
elmo
@Citizen Alan:
Oh God. This, this, a thousand times this.
JAHILL10
rootless_e at #94
Thanks for saying what I have often thought. Color that notion with the “Obama must do everything I want within the first 365 days or he’s a naive, sellout, disappointing failure” and you have the soft racism aspect of a lot of the criticism on the left.
He definitely asked for the job, but I wonder if he knew that, like a lot of black pioneers in this country, even those who voted for him were going to hold him to a standard much higher than Clinton, Carter or Generic White Democrat X.
gex
@tavella: Confirmation bias?
Jason Bylinowski
@Maude: As a person who does eat the same thing everyday (on a diet), I can vouch for the fact that this does make you insane. Might be a chicken or egg question though, unsure at the moment, though I can say that I would definitely like some chicken.
merl
aren’t the majority of food stamp recipients white women?
aimai
I love the “church lady’s” attack on what is probably another church lady–maybe she’s buying the food for a funeral? Maybe she’s contributing her share to her church supper for the poor and is sacrificing her own food dollars for the rest of the month and just hoping that god will provide? Maybe, like a lot of human beings she’s enmeshed in a web of social reciprocity (check out Carol Stack’s All Our Kin) and helping neighbors and friends with whatever she’s got during the days or weeks that she’s got it helps her and her family get by when the government aid runs out.
aimai
Violet
@Maude:
Done it. For two years. Gruel in the morning. Rice and beans at lunch. Your choice of the above for dinner with occasional white bread with margarine.
Ailuridae
@gex:
Yep. Michael D thinks that poor people spend a disproportionate amount of their food stamps on things that they shouldn’t be allowed to buy with food stamps so he notices when they do so. Classic confirmation bias
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
Flugelhorn
@Comrade Scrutinizer: I do not have to be from where you are from. I have been refered to as a young buck in my adolescent years. It is a very southern term and denotes no identity with race. The very definition of it is “Young adolescent male or teenager”.
Now because there is some black rapper named Young Buck, they own the term and it must be racist? Go take your crazy asss witch hunt somewhere else. We have all the bullshit we need right here.
catclub
@RedKitten:
1.read the book HELP, by Garrett Keizer – an excellent
book.
one conclusion from the book is that if you wait until you find
“the deserving poor” before you will deign to serve, you will wait a long time. We can always find reasons that others are
undeserving – and need to get over it.
Flugelhorn
@licensed to kill time:
Once again, not true. Its origins may be archaic, but its usage is fairly prominent. It is still used very frequently among the older populations in the western countryside, if not as a flowery anachronism in the more urban areas.
It is ridiculous that we now have to look for reasons to point out someone as rascist. As if it were the first response to a post announcing, “FIRST!”
Asinine.
chopper
@cfaller96:
exactly! michael D, you shouldn’t criticize anyone until you’ve gone down the appropriate officially-sanctioned “list of people everyone should be criticizing first”. after that you’re allowed to criticize others.
didn’t you get the memo?
Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@Flugelhorn: Yo, dipshit. The fact that you and yer kin use a word one way does not mean that no-one else has ever used the word in any other sense.
#3 is the one you’re referring to. #4 is the one that commenters here are referring to. Both existed long before the career of any rapper, black or otherwise, so it’s not an issue of “they” owning the word, you illiterate fuck. Oh, and by the way, you misspelled both “ass” and “racist”, you racist ass.
malraux
@Flugelhorn: As someone who grew up in the south, I can easily say you are full of it.
acallidryas
@Church Lady
Alright, first of all, what is it with all of you scrutinizing how everyone around you pays for things? I go grocery shopping a lot. A whole lot. Because I am forgetful and don’t make grocery lists. And I have never, ever noticed what someone buys with food stamps because I don’t care how anyone around me is making their purchase. But, supposing for a second that I did decide it was any of my damn business, your reaction is still much, much different than what I, at least, would think. Because I think that just because someone is on assistance, that doesn’t mean that they can’t have a party once in a blue moon. Just because someone is impoverished doesn’t mean you can’t have friends, or ever enjoy life. Let people live with a little happiness and dignity, for God’s sake.
And all those mentioning that people should eat more fruits and vegetables. Even if they had to buy those with food stamps, it still wouldn’t change the fact that in a lot of depressed communities the grocery stores have picked up and left and you only have “convenience stores” which don’t offer a wide selection. The problems of lack of time to cook or plan foods when you’re working and raising kids, and the complete lack of access to healthy foods are huge problems-and that last is rarely addressed.
Mike in NC
An entire year’s worth wouldn’t buy a single F-22.
Mnemosyne
@Flugelhorn:
So when Ronald Reagan talked about how we needed to cut welfare payments because of all of the welfare queens driving Cadillacs and the young bucks buying T-bone steaks with their food stamps, he was just talking about people in general and not using racially coded language?
Yeah, right. And he chose Philadelphia, MS, to give a speech about “states’ rights” totally by accident. Oh, that silly Reagan.
chopper
@acallidryas:
see, i care a lot what the people in front of me are paying with and how, and i notice it all the time at the grocery store. because usually it’s some choad taking 10 minutes with a checkbook or something. last week some stupid broad was paying with a sack of nickels, no joke. i’m looking at my watch and thinking ‘i have an hour to shlep this stuff back home, make a meal for the family and get the kid in the bath and this wacko is paying with nickels.’
Mnemosyne
@acallidryas:
I think I noticed exactly once, but that was because the woman had put pepper jack cheese in her cart but her food stamps would only allow her to buy monterey jack cheese, so she had to switch it out for the type of cheese that was covered.
Yes, that’s how specific they get in California — there’s a list of exactly which kinds of cheese you’re allowed to buy, and a slight variation like the flavoring of the cheese disallows it.
licensed to kill time
Once I was headed to the beer cooler at the store and my way was blocked by two of the hugest people – really, they were about 4 feet wide, each. I swung my cart around them and noticed that their cart had about 20 plastic 2qt jugs of soda in it. I noticed that.
I have no idea what form of payment they were using, though.
Flugelhorn
@Mnemosyne: I am sorry. Are you suggesting that only black people are on welfare? Who is racist now?
You do not get to co-opt my language and terms for your demonizing. Sorry. “Young Buck” is not a reference to race AT ALL. I am not black, yet I have been refered to many times in the past as a “Young Buck” in my formative years.
Wile E. Quixote
@Church Lady
Yes, you don’t have a clue, you’re incredibly stupid and you can’t learn. You come in here spouting your incredibly stupid and fact free nonsense and then you get your ass handed to you and rather than actually, you know, learn from the experience, you just come back and post more stupid nonsense. Are you secretly McMegan McArdle? McMegan is that you?
So, what does that have to do with anything? You said something stupid in defense of the stupid Michael D, who made a completely stupid statement, got pounded on because it was stupid and now seem to be presenting us with the “Life and Works of Saint Church Lady the Divine” as a defense for your stupidity. That doesn’t change a lot, all it tells us is that you’re stupid and do some charitable work, and are hopefully better at it than you are at making coherent arguments.
chopper
@Flugelhorn:
i think his point is more that reagan was creating a not-so-subtle image of ‘oh noes black dudes gaming the system’ for the crowd.
JGabriel
Michael D.:
No one accused you of trying. We all noticed that you did it effortlessly.
As someone who received food stamps for a couple of months a few years ago, I find that hard to believe. There’s just not enough money in it for abuse, and the gauntlet one has to run through to get it makes it not worthwhile unless one has no other options.
Finally, as an example, you complain about people buying Coke instead of juice. It’s a telling example – Coke is about $1.75 for a half gallon, while juice is about $5.00 for the same amount. So of course someone using food stamps will tend to go for Coke instead of juice; that single substitution alone can save enough money for an extra meal or two. (Personally I don’t like Coke, so went with tapwater or tea instead. Juices were simply not affordable.)
So what that example tells us is that you’re judging people, without thinking it through, based on the choices they make given extremely limited resources. Just saying what you see. Effortlessly. Without thinking.
.
Mnemosyne
@Flugelhorn:
Yep, that Ronald Reagan sure was a paragon of racial enlightenment, so of course there’s no way he could have used the term “young buck” as a racial signal.
I’m glad we have you here to clear things up for us. Here I thought all of these years that Reagan was making racially-coded statements to try and get working-class whites to support cuts to those programs that would end up hurting them, too, but now I know he was just referring to anyone on welfare.
chopper
@Mnemosyne:
maybe reagan was referring to an actual deer. like he’s in line at the A&P and there’s an honest-to-god goddamn deer in line ahead of him buying a t-bone and a 6-pack of miller and he’s thinking ‘damn, i gotta remember this one. nancy’s gonna flip her shit’.
Svensker
@aimai:
We have a friend who grew up poor. One day he came to eat with us and we had homemade hamburgers — thick juicy ones cooked over a wood fire, with toasted delicious buns, thick slices of home grown tomatoes. Absolutely delicious burgers. He hated them. Drove over to the local McDonalds for a “real” burger.
Mnemosyne
@Flugelhorn:
Go scream at Ronald Reagan’s grave if you’re upset about your language being co-opted. Or you can read comments #17 and #125 to try and understand that people are referring to an actual event where Ronald Reagan used that actual phrase to blow a racial dogwhistle, and no amount of screaming about how things were in your day is going to change what Reagan did.
Flugelhorn
@Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion: Blow it out your ass, fuck face. You do not get to use a PARTIAL term and then tell me it is the definition of something completely different. By your bulIshit standards I could just as easily lay claim to “Buck Private” as a rascist term if you can conveniently leave the “Young” out of “Young Buck”.
Go fuck yourself.
Wile E. Quixote
@Church Lady
Oh, and by the way Church Lady, have you ever read the Bible. Specifically the book of Matthew, Chapter 6, which says, among other things that a lot of “Christians” completely ignore, this about doing good works.
I dunno, but I’m kind of thinking that whipping out your charitable work as a rhetorical point in defense of a completely stupid argument is one of the things they were talking about here.
chopper
@Flugelhorn:
if reagan had instead used the term ‘monkey’, like ‘so i was in line at the supermarket and i saw this big dumb monkey buying a t-bone with food stamps!’ you’d probably argue it was nothing because your dad used to call you a ‘little monkey’ when you were a kid, right?
JGabriel
Church Lady:
Or she was buying a large amount of cheap food at discount — food that can be kept frozen and be made into a quick daily meal of fried fish and slaw.
That never occurred to you? You really suspected someone of throwing a catfish fry party on food stamps? That is one hell of a judgmental, paranoid, and stupid assumption.
.
Flugelhorn
@Mnemosyne: Why? because YOU say so? So, I guess his audience could not have been to ALL working class people? How does Reagan gun for black people on welfare by cutting welfare? Welfare is not exclusive to black people! There are white people all over this country that are on welfare, food stamps, etc. Any cut in that program affects all people in the program. You cannot cut welfare and say, “But we just want to cut the disbursement to blacks. Let the clean white folk keep their entitlements.”
Idiot.
Wile E. Quixote
@JGabriel
Effortlessly? Hell, he did it with panache and fiair, so much so that he got a 9.8 from the East German judge.
Flugelhorn
@chopper: Nice straw man, monkey boy.
MattR
@chopper: Interestingly, as I was reading this thread I could not help but think of Clerks 2 where Randall does not realize that porch monkey is racially insensitive since his grandmother used to call him that when he was young.
chopper
@JGabriel:
i don’t think deli coleslaw freezes well at all. the mayo would break down to shit when you thaw it.
honestly, i see someone buying a ton of the stuff at the store and i don’t think ‘whoa, that dude’s gonna freeze up some slaw’. i think ‘that dude’s having a party or a picnic’.
Wile E. Quixote
@Flugelhorn
Given the fact that you are too stupid and ignorant to even know how to properly spell the word, which by the way is spelled “racist” why should anyone here think that you know what it means? Perhaps instead of using an online dictionary to cherry pick a definition of “young buck” that is inaccurate and devoid of historical context you might want to use it to learn how to spell the terms that you’re talking about and then perhaps use an online encyclopedia to learn what they mean and learn some history besides.
chopper
@Flugelhorn:
jesus, you’re a buffoon.
Mnemosyne
@Flugelhorn:
Sorry, I didn’t realize that you loved Ronald Reagan so much that you absolutely refuse to believe that he could possibly say something that he meant as a racial slur. I didn’t mean to kick the pedestal out from under your hero, but that’s life.
Svensker
@Flugelhorn:
…
Where I come from (Pac NW), a “young buck” was known to be slang for a niggrah fellah. The implication was that the young black man was also well hung and mighty potent, and therefore very dangerous.
jacy
@Flugelhorn:
Maybe someone should carefully define the term “dog-whistle” using small enough words that you can understand it.
Silver
Concerning Flugelhorn:
Racist troll is racist.
Shocked I am…next thing you’ll tell me is that Church Lady is a cunt.
chopper
@Flugelhorn:
because reagan was very good at playing on white voters’ racial resentment. you tell a poor white guy that the poor black dude down the street is gaming the system and he’ll vote against his own interests. shit, that’s how the GOP operated for decades.
chopper
@jacy:
see, when he was younger he used to blow on an honest-to-god dog whistle. which means the term can’t possibly be used to mean it in the context you’re talking about.
Wile E. Quixote
@Flugelhorn:
So much ignorance. So much fail. It’s magnificent.
jacy
@chopper:
And the guy who brought the Curious George doll to the rally was making the point that Obama was inquisitive, not that he was, you know, BLACK.
DBrown
This is exactly how our country gets so fucked up – we need to reform a medical system that kills 200,000 – 300,000 people every year for reasons that are easy to trival to prevent but MD’s and the AMA drop the ball or even fight to prevent it. Yet people here are fighting over issues of race – stupid. This is exactly how the repubathugs prevent any progress against a system that kills more people then all drunk drivers, illegal drugs, gun murders, war, and terrorism all put together. UFB.
chopper
@DBrown:
and you’re talking about health care reform when there are people DYING IN HAITI.
Wile E. Quixote
I’ll bet that Flugelhorn is one of those white guys who likes to call black people “niggers” and then, when he gets called on it says “Hey, I’m not a racist, you guys call each other that all the time.”
DBrown
@chopper: Your point? Last I checked, this thread was dealing with malpractice reform (ie – giving MD’s no checks on bad behavior) which last I checked, is the cause of more Americans dying every year than all those who died in Haiti.
Mnemosyne
@DBrown:
And yet a huge part of the reason our healthcare system is such a disaster is because of issues of race because a lot of white people don’t want the “undeserving” (ie poor black and brown people) to have affordable healthcare. Trying to talk about the problems in this country without talking about race is ignoring the giant elephant in the room that’s blocking progress.
Wile E. Quixote
Flugelhorn is probably also pissed off because he fired from his last job for going up to female employees and saying “Hey, I’d like to feed you some of my hot tubesteak and white gravy” and then tried to explain to the HR department that this meant that he wanted to serve them a hot dog with the special white sauce that his mom used to make.
JGabriel
chopper:
The point was that cole slaw keeps reasonably well, if refrigerated. Maybe freezing isn’t the best method, I don’t know, but there’s no need to automatically assume it’s for a party instead of being doled out in meals over a couple weeks time.
.
chopper
@DBrown:
my point is, if you’re the type to get all high-and-mighty about what blog commenters should or shouldn’t be commenting on, you’re in the wrong place. this is
spartaballoon juice.chopper
@JGabriel:
dunno. maybe i assume too much but when i see someone buying that much cole slaw i aint thinking they’re freezing it or saving it for a few weeks’ noshing, but rather having a party or something. like today when i saw some dudes buying a shit-ton of beer and chips and what-not. i figured it was for the big game, as opposed to just restocking their pantry with chips and cheap beer for the next month. i think that’s a safe assumption.
DBrown
@Mnemosyne: I agree that race defines much of the U.S. (or is that us.) But the shear number of needless deaths caused by our medical system (and shielded by AMA and MD’s) is frightening and lawyers are our only defense. I was just surprised that the race issue was the main thread and this mass killing is ignored by so many here.
jacy
@Mnemosyne:
Exactly. The old trope “Not all Republicans are racists, but all racists are Republicans” has some truth to it.
I was raised by liberal Democrats in the West and married into a family full of racist motherfuckers in the South. So while not raised in the South, I’ve been here for 10 years and have seen more than I care to.
My in-laws, who are white and upper middle-class and college educated, are against any kind of welfare and government healthcare because they don’t want thier tax money supporting the “wrong kind of people.” And they don’t mean poor people, they mean black people, and since Katrina, Hispanic people. I don’t have to guess at this, they said it out loud.
Once at the dinner table, in front of my young children, they were telling a story about how years ago the public pools were so nice in New Orleans before they “let all the little nigger kids in.” Needless to say words were exchanged.
So don’t tell me that there isn’t a fair slice of racism behind a lot of this obstruction for healthcare reform, and all the other teabag shit, because I can give you lots of examples that tell me different.
Every white republican southerner I personally know would gladly take any kind of government handout as long as you could assure them it wasn’t going to anybody who is the “wrong people.”
Wile E. Quixote
@DBrown:
Damn, and here I was thinking that the point of this thread was DougJ’s magnificent punking and pwnage of the incredibly ignorant Ben Pershing. But maybe I was wrong, maybe it’s not about those strapping young bucks buying steaks, or tort reform and is instead about the death tax.
chopper
@jacy:
as davis x. machina put it, “The salient fact of American politics is that there are fifty to seventy million voters each of who will volunteer to live, with his family, in a cardboard box under an overpass, and cook sparrows on an old curtain rod, if someone would only guarantee that the black, gay, Hispanic, liberal, whatever, in the next box over doesn’t even have a curtain rod, or a sparrow to put on it.”
chopper
@Wile E. Quixote:
shh, you’re pissing off the thread police.
JGabriel
chopper:
Of course. Right. Because a couple of guys is identical to a woman with two children in tow, and fish & slaw is nutritionally the same as beer & chips.
Of course one would make the same assumptions. Why did I not see that before!
.
chopper
@JGabriel:
well, you’re the guy talking about freezing store bought coleslaw, so what the hell do you know?
Sui Generis
@Jamie:
Actually the term was used on the auction block when selling a male kidnapped from Africa. As in What am offered for this fine young buck?
I forget what they called a women but it wasn’t wench. That was a common term for young female of not such great standing. They would point their breeding potential. Some of this is brought out in old law case decisions in Alabama case law books.
The idea was to dehumanize them; they are animals you know, so it’s alright to own them. And you have to keep them busy, they are lazy and won’t work unless you give them a thrashing. This while the slave masters lived in the grand houses (and wrote Declarations of Independence and such stuff) that the slaves built and was waited on hand and foot by slaves.
Just a wee bit racist and definitely not new.
les
@Flugelhorn:
Because only Teh Horn gets to pronounce what words mean. Because shut up, that’s why.
les
@les:
The blockquote should have been, and I know it was:
FYWP. Also.
very reverend crimson fire of compassion
@Wile E. Quixote: It’s not the stupidity, it’s the rabid commitment to the stupidity that makes it magnificent.
les
@chopper:
Based on my own experience and the majority of two hundred or so comments, I think it’s safe to say that two of those words don’t really work so well together, especially in the realm of ignorant (in the sense of being without actual, you know, knowledge) third party observation of human behavior.
chopper
@les:
dunno. assuming stuff is what we humans do, day in and day out. everything we do revolves around assumptions.
so yeah, i see some broad buying a ton of catfish, breading and cole slaw and i think ‘party at her house’. then again, i’m from the midwest, where the Fish Fry (notice i capitalize it) is a fuckin sacrament.
maybe others assume she’s just trying to feed her family catfish for a few weeks. okay, no big whoop. one of us is right.
les
@chopper:
As a fellow Heart of American, I second the sacrament; I probably made my own bad assumption, since the tone upthread seemed to be “and no parties with your food stamps, you welfare queen, you;” but in cruising your posts, you didn’t say such. Ah well, if it weren’t for jumping to conclusions and the omnipresent flugels and church ladies, what would the point of blogs be?
Tax Analyst
@RedKitten: Hey, when you’re engaged in Class Warfare you must be able to distinguish who is the enemy. Hence, the poor should be required to dress in rags. Otherwise you’d have to consider them terrorists, since they would be dressed as “regular” people and thus out of uniform.
Gitmo fo’ de po’!!
/snark
Tax Analyst
@chopper: Could also be several families who take turns hosting a gathering of friends – perhaps 4 or 5 families. So every 4th or 5th such gathering you would use your resources to make the purchases.
Of course those gathered families could also be plotting sedition over that catfish & cole slaw, and that’s kinda like socialism/communism, too, isn’t it?
Well, then forget I said it and please, please, please don’t report me to HUAC.
chopper
@les:
heh. the funny thing is, i have all this experience as a cashier with people buying all manner of crap with stamps, but i grew up in a white-ass area. i tell people a story or two about it and they’re all ‘you’re a racist’ and i’m all ‘why do you assume the people i’m talking about were black?’ and they shut up right quick.
Old Fart
Of course malpractice insurance costs are never passed on to the patients; they’re just absorbed by the doctors, clinics, hospitals.
PurpleGirl
@Old Fart:
It’s not a matter of the costs being passed on… it’s that the costs are a miniscule amount of the total health care bill. Capping awards will not lower the costs in any meaningful way. Texas and several other states already did that and there has been very little to no impact on medical care costs. However, Republicans and conservatives have been trying to restrict all tort awards for decades. It cuts to being able to redress a grievance against a corporation.
Tax Analyst
@chopper: Could also be several families who take turns hosting a gathering of friends – perhaps 4 or 5 families. So every 4th or 5th such gathering you would use your resources to make the purchases.
Of course those gathered families could also be plotting sedition over that catfish & cole slaw, and that’s kinda like the bad, comment moderation-causing “s” word, too, isn’t it?
Well, then forget I said it and please, please, please don’t report me to HUAC.
But anyway, this thread looks dead by now.
lethargytartare
@Church Lady: @Church Lady:
“It also defies logic to not think that there is a vast amount of waste and fraud in the food stamp program.”
OTOH, it actually defies reality to claim waste and fraud are “vast” in the Food Stamp Program:
The program is poised for a historic expansion with the addition of $20 billion in federal stimulus money. About $400 million, or 2 percent, of that will be lost to fraud, according to government estimates.
it further defies reason to call any waste and fraud losses in a program that accounted for about 1.2% of the 2008 fed budget “vast” in any meaningful sense of the term.
But don’t let that get in the way of another satisfying, if entirely ignorant, rant.
mclaren
This, incidentally, explains why doctors and hospitals remain stuck in the 19th century with paper record-keeping. Doctors and hospitals fanatically refuse to change to modern digital record-keeping because it would instantly let us identify who the rotten doctors are.
That’s one of the biggest reasons why health care reform is dead. American health care costs vastly more than the rest of the world because it’s so inefficient, and a good part of the reason for that inefficiency is to avoid modern digital record-keeping that would identify the 007s (doctors who are so incompetent that the nurses say “they’re licensed to kill.” Talk to any nurse; the nurses know who the 007s are. Every hospital has at least one doctor infamous as a 007, but the AMA adamantly refuses to get rid of ’em. In America, it’s nearly impossible to lose your license to practice medicine, no matter how badly you screw up).
JGabriel
chopper:
Touché.
(Yeah, yeah, a bit late, but it was a funny enough comeback to deserve acknowledgement.)
.
satby
So Church Lady’s SO Flugelhorn stopped by. Nice.
Bet their kids have 2 heads.