I am troubled by stupid people:
The share of benefits flowing to the least affluent households, the bottom fifth, has declined from 54 percent in 1979 to 36 percent in 2007, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis published last year.
And as more middle-class families like the Gulbransons land in the safety net in Chisago and similar communities, anger at the government has increased alongside. Many people say they are angry because the government is wasting money and giving money to people who do not deserve it. But more than that, they say they want to reduce the role of government in their own lives. They are frustrated that they need help, feel guilty for taking it and resent the government for providing it. They say they want less help for themselves; less help in caring for relatives; less assistance when they reach old age.
What’s ironic is that we give benefits to people who don’t really need assistance because doing so helps maintain political support for assisting people who really do need the help. And, yet, these people wind up hating us for giving them a hand.
Well, a few comments. Take the case of Gulbranson, the 56 year old father of five -making $39,000, can’t afford to send his kids to school with a bag lunch, can’t care for his own mother, takes government handouts. His claim that he doesn’t need the help is a crock of shit. You write, “we give benefits to people who don’t really need assistance because doing so helps maintain political support for assisting people who really do need the help.” But the fact is, he needs the help. he’s just two dumb or proud to admit it.
That brings me to this: these people really ARE either idiots, selfish, or both.
But threaten to take it away, and they start crying, like at least two people do in the article.
And I know people like this personally. They believe the government can’t do anythign right, they resent what assistance they get, they resent it if they don’t get it, and they hold this irrational belief that while they can’t get by on what they have now, they could certainly get by with less.
And the dude with the disabled daughter takes the cake: he’s both a sadist AND a masochist.
I’d say this is the real failing of our schools. I don’t get these people at all. They have about as much consistency as Ayn Rand taking Social Security and Medicare “Because she paid in, so she’ll take the benefits.”
Really the schools? I fight all day with teenagers who roll their eyes when I kindly ask them to put their cell phones away. Yet, when I tell their parents this, it’s not like the phone is taken away as punishment. I have on my roster of 130 kids, at least two crack babies. I have two students who just this year lost their dads, and one of them lost her mom a month later. I have probably more than a half-dozen who do not live with either parent. I teach at least one student who has revealed to me that his dad is a alcoholic and one who has told me that dad abuses mom. Additionally, most of my students have not grown up speaking English.
I work 70 hours a week, a large portion of that at home, taking time away from my own autistic son and yet in two years, the most important factor that will determine if I keep my job is how well my students do on the ACT. That’s right, the ACT: a college test not designed for kids who have only been in this country for two years or for severely cognitively impaired students. Alas, two CI kids, who cannot tie their shoes, will take the ACT in three weeks.
Toni: It is an insane world we live in. Politicians and Public Ed are like oil and water. I think they view education as something akin to a sports contest. Here are the bucks, may the “best” win. We need to provide all kids equal chances for success, and in a grossly uneven world that is hard to do. In Michigan these days, it is damn near impossible. Good luck, and take good care.
Thanks 🙂 All I know is that I will spend my summer trying to figure out how to get out of the profession before I am forced out by crazy politics.
As far as equal chances, it would be nice if all districts in Michigan received equal funding. My district gets the smallest amount allowed by law – $6846.
Concerning the unequal funding for districts in Michigan, I have never understood why someone, (a district, an individual, or a class action group) did not take this to court. If “seperate but equal” is unconstitutional, what about seperate and unequal forever and always? As far as getting out of your profession is concerned, the loser here will clearly be the people you serve.
Happened some years back in NJ, and resulted in one of the most amusing lines in a judicial ruling:
“We meant what we said,
and we said what we meant:
the schools must be funded
one hundred percent.”
Unfortunately, judges don’t really get to hold a gun to legislator’s heads while they are writing budgets.
The government helps Matt Falk and his wife care for their disabled 14-year-old daughter. It pays for extra assistance at school and for trained attendants to stay with her at home while they work. It pays much of the cost of her regular visits to the hospital.
Mr. Falk, 42, would like the government to do less.
“She doesn’t need some of the stuff that we’re doing for her,” said Mr. Falk, who owns a heating and air-conditioning business in North Branch. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing if society can afford it, but given the situation that our society is facing, we just have to say that we can’t offer as much resources at school or that we need to pay a higher premium” for her medical care.
Mr. Falk, who voted for Mr. Cravaack, said he did not want to pay higher taxes and did not want the government to impose higher taxes on anyone else. He said that his family appreciated the government’s help and that living with less would be painful for them and many other families. But he said the government could not continue to operate on borrowed money.
“They’re going to have to reduce benefits,” he said. “We’re going to have to accept it, and we’re going to have to suffer.”
A man after David Gregory’s heart. Wouldn’t be surprised to see Mr. Falk Meet The Press sometime soon.
If Falk thinks the government should stop borrowing and reduce debt, he could start walking his talk immediately by refusing the benefits he obviously put time and effort into applying for for his daughter…
what kind of parent says “”She doesn’t need some of the stuff that we’re doing for her… we just have to say that we can’t offer as much resources at school or that we need to pay a higher premium” for her medical care.”
It would be one thing if the reason was “because we are destitute”. But the reason is “Mr. Falk… said he did not want to pay higher taxes and did not want the government to impose higher taxes on anyone else.”
I sure wish his daughter gets to hear about what a fucking cheapskate her dad is. What a fucking asshole.
What kind of a fucking parent is this?
the one in the article, Matt Falk. Described on page 5 of 6.
President Obama’s “we take care of our own” campaign is the first serious effort to market the values of solidarity, mutual assistance, and community to be TRIED in America in 30 years. The right has pushed a consistent and attractive self-reliance/resent-the-poor line without opposition.
Many are the Democrats with multiple family members vitally dependent on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, ADC, food stamps, unemployment compensation, and other key pieces of American social democracy who devotedly watch Fox and regularly vote Republican.
It’s sad when this is just the ordinary stupidity of not being able to connect the dots.
Or the about equally ordinary stupidity of actually believing Republican lies that the country just can’t afford such things and they are “job killers” that are dragging us all down.
But it’s a moral tragedy when it’s the more self-destructive combination of knowing very well that one depends utterly on “socialism” and that the country most certainly can afford it and is in many ways better off for it and yet profoundly disapproving all the same out of unquestioning acceptance of the ethic of “rugged individualism” as the true and honest American Way.
Ayn Rand was credible because Coolidge already spoke for so many of us.
And she taught nothing that Disney’s frontier epics and TV series didn’t also teach, two or three nights a week and at the theaters on weekends.
It’s no different than the people who appear to honestly believe that workers should always uncomplainingly accept layoffs, increased work, etc. and that the sole emotion we should have about our employee relationship is gratitude that we have a job. Put your head down and work hard and earn your place and all that. That if the company decides in their infinite wisdom to cut budgets they are our bettors and know what is right and how dare you question that. Basically, it’s an attitude of power and privilege is always right and we desperately want to be on the side of power and privilege even when they are actively engaged in impoverishing and exploiting us. I guess you could call it the boot-licker mentality.
You want gratitude? Get a dog.
I would refer these folks to, once again, What’s The Matter With Kansas? Sigh.
Cognitive dissonance.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/02/12/us/entitlement-map.html?hp
This map also struck me as significant as well. As you can see, the rural south, the heart of the GOP’s power, is the most dependent on federal aid. I’d love to see political elites in the deep south try to maintain order and govern their polities without the federal government paying the bills. Its data like this that tempts me into further federalism. Let these people experiment with true “small government” and see how that works out. Would the GOP still be able to dominate these regions if the public had to wrestle with the truth about dependence on Washington?
And why don’t dems in Washington ever call their bluffs? If a senator or congressman from these regions ever gave a speech saying that federal money is the problem, I’d make a note of that and draft the budget accordingly. For some reason, we choose to accommodate and enable this hypocrisy.
It’s because Democrats aren’t interested in playing politics. Probably because the money is not in it. Look at the white Southern Democrats in Congress. Are any one of them, besides Cohen of TN, not a Blue Dog? I don’t think so.
We had a chance with the stimulus funds. The crack team of advisors lead by Rahm Emmanuel gave the Deep South sumbitches (re: governors) too damn long to decide whether or not to take it.
It should have been a week. And they should have had to actually write a letter officially requesting the money. The actual projects the $$ would be used for could have been decided later.
SC doesn’t want the $$? No problem, MA/CT/VT/ME could sure use some road work. TX thinks its a waste of time? No Problem: High Speed Rail LA to SF
THEN the SOB’s would have been explaining why the billions of TX rainyday funds were depleted without getting rid of the 5B shortfall.
OT, but something else on the contraception thing. People would do well to read this:
http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/politics/5674/liberals_enabled_bishops_in_contraception_ba
ttle/
The article reminds me of drug addicts. They may hate using, hate what it does to them, hate the people who sell them the drugs, but they don’t have the strength to stop.
They want to get clean, get off the stuff, but that damned government check keeps showing up in the mail.
Let me take a couple of quotes from the article that struck me, in particular:
and:
I’m not going to argue that there isn’t a certain amount of cognitive dissonance going on here, because there is. While this article focuses on the role of government in situations like this, it ignores the fundamental problem.
I am not opposed to a large federal government because I think there are certain things that a large, centralized government can do that no private corporation or state government would have the resources to undertake. As an example, consider the rebuilding of New Orleans after Katrina. I’m not suggesting that went great by any means, but no other entity would have the resources to even attempt to tackle it.
Of course that sword cuts both ways, as no state would have had the resources to wage a war in Iraq either. That was, I think, the underlying point of that Matt Stoller article from a few weeks ago. But I digress.
In the case provided in this article, the ‘safety net programs’ described are an attempt by the government to make up for systems (such as health care) that are horribly broken. That is the fundamental problem – not that the government is trying to provide a minimum standard of living for its people, but that by doing so it is both covering up and feeding systems that need full blown reform, if not a complete restart.
I think that’s the reason people can simultaneously believe that the government should provide fewer benefits while also taking advantage of those benefits. Because they have a sense that it shouldn’t be like this (and they are right), but at the same time, don’t see any other options that will get the job done at the moment.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/02/12/us/entitlement-map.html
County by county: where do fed funds go. The more fed funds people depend on, the more Republican the area. Insane.