Mean-Spirited Motherf#!kers

The Republican Party continues to amaze with its capacity for cruelty and caprice, especially when dealing with the most hard-pressed of our fellow citizens.

The latest outrage is the attempt to link continued funding of emergency unemployment benefits to the requirement that people collecting benefits submit to drug testing -- and to require anyone who is collecting benefits and not a high school graduate to show that they are pursuing a GED.  Isn't it bad enough to be without a job in the midst of the worst recession in the post-World War II period?  Who feels the need to harass and demean people who are in many instances facing economic ruin -- or at the least tremendous insecurity?  

This sort of thing just confirms my sense that to be a Republican these days is to not be fully human.  (Even those who try reveal themselves to be sporting a heart that is three sizes too small.)   One has to have some kind of hole in one's soul to really embrace this sort of punitive thinking.      

Comments

[low-tech cyclist]

If there's an argument anymore that Republicans aren't just plain evil, I can't see it.

I mean, take the business about tax cuts: Krugman and Kevin Drum say it proves that the GOP doesn't give a flying fuck about deficits, but that's old news.

What we know now is that:

a) they're for big-ass tax cuts for the rich (old news, I know), but

b) they'll be dragged into a tax cut for the middle class and the working poor only if they think the politics of opposing it will really kill them, and

c) they really want the lower middle class and working poor to have more "skin in the game" - that is, to pay MORE taxes than they're paying now.

In the past, they at least tried to pretend that the tax cuts they wanted were for everybody, and that the rich incidentally got a bigger share of the tax cuts simply because they had more income subject to taxation.

This year, they've abandoned that pretense entirely. They're for making life easier for the rich, and harder for everyone else.

Oh, and over at Rortybomb, a piece on how de facto debtors' prisons are making a comeback here in the Land of the Free.

[kathy a.]

SC -- more hoops for people to jump through, when they are already struggling. the drug testing thing should not be constitutional, i think -- but people trying to get unemployment are not in the best position to litigate. and where exactly are people supposed to sign up for the GED courses? my state's community colleges are about to be hit really hard by the latest round of budget cuts.

one of many devastating things about poverty is that it is so damned hard to do any of the things that need to be done; and all the extra layers of obstruction are so many more bricks on one's shoulders. finding food, keeping shelter, trying to get appropriate educational assistance or child care or elder care, trying to find medical care; what this takes for poor people is beyond the imagination of those who are more fortunate.

mccardle's story about a middle class woman who "voluntarily" sunk to poverty -- offered in support of her theory that poor people are poor when they act like poor people, or something like that -- is pretty damned clueless.

[Sir Charles]

kathy,

One thing I've noticed that the poor really lack -- money.

[Paula B]

They lack money, sympathy or even respect, and, more and more, opportunity to get unpoor.

[nancy]

The poor also lack computer access, which is why the public libraries are always jam packed. Here, their use goes up even more in the winter, with some folks just trying to stay busy looking for work and warm at the same time. Cutting back these services and library hours make it still harder to climb out of a hole. This stuff makes me crazy -- kind of like the trend among employers to advertise that one 'need not apply' if currently unemployed.

If I were queen for a day I'd make every one of these miserable people read Dickens and hand me a report. Cantor especially. His assignment is Bleak House . Boehner needs the A Christmas Carol refresher course. The rest of them get Oliver Twist or now that de facto debtor's prison (per ltc) has made a reappearance, Little Dorritt as an option.

SirC -- 'hole in one's soul' certainly seems generous.

[nancy]

lol. the edroso link to mccardle. 'shoulder pads for the soul.' all time.

[Sir Charles]

Roy is a treasure.

I owe him a beer for that one.

And his reference to the "Anchoress" as that "cheapjack mystic" wins him another one.

[Davis X. Machina]

"One thing I've noticed that the poor really lack -- money."

My moral theology professor -- a wonderful Jesuit -- was fond of saying "The leading cause of poverty in American is not having enough money." When you argue about the putative causes of poverty, education, or the lack of it; drugs; the 'culture of poverty' -- you're no longer arguing about poverty.

His solution was equally sparse. "Just give them some goddamn money".

[nancy]

Payroll tax cut extension attached to a tar sands, emphasis , 'tar sands', oil pipeline. What a concept. One of these things is not like the other as Sesame Street taught us. Is this a Friday afternoon thing that was supposed to go unremarked?

[paula]

Nancy, that's what Friday's are for.The later the better.
On a completely different note, Slate has put up an IMMENSE salute to Hitchins
.

[beckya57]

While we're on this subject, anybody see Marks' article on the Forbes website about how poor black folk just ought to have been born white and rich, and it's their fault if they aren't? LGM (Loomis and Campos, I think) absolutely eviscerated it.

God I hate this mean, cramped, ugly era.

[KN]

I am of two minds respecting my impending change of status from expatriot to resident citizen. Of the many things that bear upon it, issues like this loom large in my perceptions of what I will be coming back to.

It seems pretty clear to me that the right wing ideal is a kind of aristocratic oligarchy and they will stop at nothing to ensure such a condition. They have allied with other extremists in that quest because on the face of it they are, always have been and always will be a minority. I guess the reason why they are so afraid of having to live in a democratic republic as a minority is because of their attitude towards all other minorities and how they would treat them. The most generous face I can put upon it is they would be harsh.

It is hard to describe such people accurately, but for all the ways available the one that resonates most strongly for me is that they are proudly ignorant. They project upon the rest of humanity the ugly pettiness and vain conceit of their own attitudes and world view and are without any form of reflection or introspection.

Worst of all, their efforts to skew the social balance even more in their own favor have been succeeding for the past 3 decades or so and they have made great headway. They have remade the global landscape. They have traded away for crass lucre the noblest and highest ideals of a fairly unique form of civilization, the United States that we knew, that was a beacon to the world as a whole, a source of strength and a bastion of dare I say it, at least some justice. It was never perfect, or even approximately so, but it was better than anything else, then, before the republican democracy was perverted.

Paula - yes Hitchens is dead. It is our loss more so than his. He deserves to be lauded and villified. Lauded by those who understood and subscribed to his philosophy and practise. Villified of course by those who favor superstition and authoritarianism. I never knew him, but he was my peer.

Here's a thought, if congress is so eager to impose drug testing on unemployment insurance filers, shouldn't there be a monthly drug test for members of congress? After all, they are vested with a great responsibility.

Actully, a daily drug test seems more appropriate for members of congress.

[Paula B]

But, we need you back here, KN. We need your reason, your clear thinking, your knowledge. This society can't afford to lose people like you. Does that count?

But, in the end, you gotta do what you gotta do.

[Paula B]

Here's some good news. The SEC is going after top execs at Fannie and Freddie. You know, the ones with the big bonuses.

>>The SEC said it is trying to force the former executives to pay fines and give up “ill-gotten gains,” and to bar them from serving as officers or directors of public companies.

See today's WP for details.

[Paula B]

this one's for you, SC:

Crippling the Right to Organize
http://nyti.ms/vykN19

[paula]

Kn---how seriously should we take Justin gillis' story about the permafrost melting, in today's NYT? IT sounds like the end of the world.

[Sir Charles]

Paula B.

I just had one of my partners settle a case that involved outrageous employer acts in terms of terminations and inimidations in part because of fear about the Board losing its quorum. (It was a good settlement nonetheless.)

It is a disgrace.

[nancy]

Becky -- The Marks' article at Forbes. Clueless. But you'll appreciate this I imagine. They had to correct the unintended irony of the title of the piece. There's a lot wrong with 'If I Was a Poor Black Kid,' not the least of which is the grammar in the title.

Forbes now seeking 'your' feedback. Oops. Sometimes those white-privileged assessments ought to be carefully edited if they haven't been decently scrapped.