03.06.14
The 4th Crucifixion of Jesus of America
Jesus of America said don’t feed the poor. If you do, they’ll come right to your door. They’ll wind up like stray cats, shedding on the floor. That’s what Jesus taught.
Paul Krugman has crucified Paul Ryan no less than four times this week at the New York Times for the latter’s new Congressional report on poverty and what poor Americans need: slashing food stamps and health care.
And even those four nail drivings may not quite be enough.
The capstone, his Friday column:
[If] generous aid to the poor perpetuates poverty, the United States — which treats its poor far more harshly than other rich countries, and induces them to work much longer hours — should lead the West in social mobility, in the fraction of those born poor who work their way up the scale. In fact, it’s just the opposite: America has less social mobility than most other advanced countries …
It is, in a way, nice to see the likes of Mr. Ryan at least talking about the need to help the poor. But somehow [his] notion of aiding the poor involves slashing benefits while cutting taxes on the rich.
“Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue,” is Krugman’s lede. Great sentence.
“So when you see something like the current scramble by Republicans to declare their deep concern for America’s poor, it’s a good sign, indicating a positive change in social norms. Goodbye, sneering at the 47 percent; hello, fake compassion.”
The fake compassion shtick brings the blog back to Jesus of America’s citation of Tory Iain Duncan Smith as someone informing Republican efforts on how to lift the unfortunate.
Paul Ryan also huddled with Iain Duncan Smith, a former leader of Britain’s Conservative Party. Smith is well known in the United Kingdom for his attempts to better connect conservatives with the poor.
“We’ve been paying very close attention to the Tories and their think tanks,??? Ryan said … “[We] can learn from their experience, both their mistakes and their successes, so we can rework our welfare system and get people out of poverty and onto lives of self-sufficiency and dignity.???
Paul Ryan …when mentioning Iain Duncan Smith, counts on American disinterest in whatever is happening in other countries to render the stupid … oblivious to the fact he’s drawing ideas from someone roundly condemned for attacking the poor in British society.
Jesus of America says don’t feed the poor! They are just too lazy, they’ll never work at all!
Republican Jesus! Hey, amen!
Not satire. Jesus strike me down, I wouldn’t say it if it weren’t absolutely true!
Ted Jr. said,
March 7, 2014 at 10:44 am
In my opinion this is mostly accurate:
http://rt.com/op-edge/uk-poor-treated-animals-398/
============================
Perhaps Ryan is like Carlin, a Catholic who felt rejection
because he didn’t like the dogmatic strictures which he
grew up inside of.
Can’t see what turns someone who grew up in a mostly
socially liberal religious environment turn into a piece of
refuse like this one has.
But takes all kinds, (as Ted Sr. illustrates)
George Smith said,
March 7, 2014 at 4:41 pm
Ryan was a beneficiary of the Social Security Survivor’s benefit after his father died. Yet one of his primary goals is to dismantle Social Security.
The RT article echoes what I’d been reading in English newspapers re the results of letting the Tories and Iain Duncan Smith show their compassion for the poor. Compassion means roughing them up, hopefully getting rid of some through increased attrition.
I didn’t post this today but the WaPost exposed Ryan as a bald-faced liar. He had this story to tell, one about a poor little boy who said he didn’t want a free lunch at school, he wanted his lunch in a brown bag like all the other kids because that meant someone cared about him. This was tied to his spout about how aid to the poor robs them of their dignity, dignity that can only come through work. Well, as many have pointed out, the poor actually do work in the United States. In fact, more of them are working than in western European nations with larger social programs for the poor.
Here’s the dissection:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2014/03/06/a-story-too-good-to-check-paul-ryan-and-the-story-of-the-brown-paper-bag/?hpid=z3
So, in a nutshell, Ryan passed this off as something fresh, when it’s from a book which narrates something from 25 years ago, and not even a case where the “a little boy” was getting a free school lunch, but someone who was being offered meals by a private citizen. And he twisted this out of shape to convey the message that food assistance doesn’t work and it’s not what people want or need. Further, he took the story from a group that advocates for food assistance programs, not for dismantling them as is his thesis.
We have a class of wealthy people, almost always on the right, and Ryan is one and every sentence is some kind of lie, even the words “and,” “the,” “or” and “but.”
It often works because modern journalism is just buried by it. It takes time to unravel and list every damn thing and the list grows so long, readers and viewers of low or medium intellect begin to think, this is so awful it could not possibly be true.