Usa Thread

[Steve]

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/the-monty-burns-republicans-food-stamps/

Cut food stamps but go all in for corporate welfare for Big Ag? That’s the Republican Party and the farm bill. Reports The Washington Post:

House Republicans narrowly passed a farm bill on Thursday that was stripped of hundreds of billions in funding for food stamps, abandoning four decades of precedent to gain the backing of conservative lawmakers.

The 216 to 208 vote was a victory for a Republican caucus that has struggled to pass the most basic of legislation, but it also set up weeks of acrimony and uncertainty as House and Senate leaders must reconcile two vastly different visions for providing subsidies to farmers and feeding the hungry.

Ross Douthat is not amused:

This is egregious whatever you think of the food stamp program, and it’s indicative of why the endless, often-esoteric debates about the Republican future actually matter to our politics. Practically any conception of the common good, libertarian or communitarian or anywhere in between, would produce better policy than a factionally-driven approach of further subsidizing the rich while cutting programs for the poor. The compassionate-conservative G.O.P. of George W. Bush combined various forms of corporate welfare with expanded spending on social programs, which was obviously deeply problematic in various ways … but not as absurd and self-dealing as only doing welfare for the rich.

More:

Reasonable people can disagree, in other words, about what kind of conservatism would best serve the common good. But everyone should agree that any alternative would be preferable to a Republican Party that doesn’t seem to think about the common good at all.

Amen. Every House Democrat opposed this bill because it jettisoned food stamps. Only 12 Republican House members voted against the bill. Only twelve. Andrew Sullivan:

There’s no small government consistency here – just an embrace of subsidizing Big Ag and a contempt for the needy in a long, protracted growth recession. Are theytrying to make themselves look like total douchebags?

The Monty Burns Republicans. That’s what they are. Look, I will grant you that the food stamp program almost certainly needs reform, given the astronomical rate of growth in the past decade, past even what you would expect in the face of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. On the other hand, we have a lot more poor people, and people barely making it. TheWall Street Journal has a good, balanced piece on the complexities of the food-stamp program and its growth. It has become much easier to qualify for food stamps, but that is on purpose. Excerpt:

“We decided to adopt [easier] standards in order to prevent [people] from having to spend all of their life savings,†said Richard Berry, a GOP-appointed director of the agency that screens applicants in Mississippi, where one out of every three children receive benefits. “We didn’t want people to have to become destitute in order to get help.â€

There are no doubt some lazy people who are enjoying being on the dole, and who have no intention of getting off of food stamps. But I bet most people who came onto the rolls in the past few years are like this guy from the Journal story:

With more entering the program, social service groups began recommending it as an option for struggling families that previously hadn’t applied.

That is what happened to Basem Eljauni, a 55-year-old cashier at a Sam’s Club in Greensboro, N.C., who lost his two businesses—a grocery store and a gas station—and his $250,000 in savings and investments. The father of six says he now makes around $1,000 a month if he is lucky and supplements his income with about $800 in government-paid food assistance and handouts from charities.

“It’s hard to see yourself stuck on food stamps,†said Mr. Eljauni. “Amazing—I never thought I was going to be stuck in the system.â€

I’ve never had to rely on food stamps, but I have friends who have found themselves in a very tight economic spot, through no fault of their own, and who had to go on food stamps to feed their children. There is no shame in that. It can happen to people you know, to people in your own family. It can happen to you.

Food writer Corby Kummer, who, like most people who follow food policy, hates the farm bill, puts this latest GOP move into perspective. It’s not at all a crazy idea to separate agricultural policy from anti-hunger policy, he says:

Anyone who looks at the farm bill for a few minutes–or, like Dan Imhoff, devotes a book to it, or, like Marion Nestle, an entire semester’s course to it–sees what a chimera or, more to the point, a monster it is. It has next to nothing to do with the farms most people think of–the ones growing mixed crops, the ones that supply farmer’s markets. It doesn’t mention environmental protection or land conservation, though some of the country’s most important safeguards are in it. And it doesn’t mention nutrition assistance or hunger, though fully four-fifths of it are food stamps. Why not keep the agricultural parts, even if they benefit only industrial agriculture, in what’s called the farm bill, and call the food-assistance portion what it is? That would get the farm bill back on the rails, and stop letting SNAP debates hijack every vote.

Here’s why not: because that means, as anyone in the anti-hunger community recognizes, pushing the 47 million Americans on food stamps onto an ice floe.

More Kummer:

In case it might have crossed your mind that the Republicans–who left subsidies to millionaire farmers untouched and un-subject to means testing, as the Cato Institute pointed out right away–might give a bit more consideration to agriculture lobbyists than to food-stamp recipients, Derek Thompson makes the role of campaign contributions absolutely plain in this good and stark piece.

The Republican Party is throwing corporate welfare at farmers, but telling people who are so poor they qualify for government aid to feed themselves that they are not a priority. As a matter of basic politics, the Republicans have lost their minds. This is Mitt Romney’s 47 percent remark all over again.

President Obama has vowed to veto this GOP farm bill if it hits his desk, so Congress is going to have to try again. You know who needs to find their voice and use it right now? Conservative Christian pastors and leaders. Christians need to seriously reconsider uncritical support for a political party that prioritizes lavishing subsidies on the agribusiness rich while telling the poor to sit quietly and wait for scraps.

[Steve]

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/07/yes-you-should-be-totally-outraged-by-the-farm-bill/277159/

The GOP's aversion to funding food stamps is cultural and deeply ideological. But the less obvious background music playing here is the powerful and pernicious role of money in politics.

 

Three weeks ago, in a report that had nothing to do with farms, the Sunlight Foundation revealed that just 0.01% of the U.S. population -- one ten-thousandth of the country -- accounted for 28 percent of all disclosed political donations in the 2012 election. About one-third the capacity of a large football stadium funds about one-third of national elections.

 

This is just a factoid. But it's a revealing factoid. Relying on the wealthiest Americans to finance our elections isn't bad for the obvious reason, which is that rich people "buy" elections. It's bad for the less obvious reason that rich people buy the attention of the electeds. As Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat, recently told the Yale Institution for Social and Policy Studies, senators and congresspeople are functionally telemarketers, whose ambition requires them to spend the majority of their time raising money for the next election.

This is about the farm bill, how exactly? Elected representatives trying to raise millions of dollars a pop don't have people on food stamps or unemployment insurance on their speed dial. That would be absurd. But they do have ag lobbyists and large farm donors. And they do have deficit-weary financiers who are scared of debt and the growing safety net. The people on the other ends of these fundraising calls (or at these fundraising events) wield a powerful weapon. Their influence shapes "the limits of acceptable political discourse, one conversation at a time" to the point where passing a bill without increased farm subsidies seems wholly unacceptable but passing a bill without food assistance for 47 million families feels a-okay.

"It doesn't really matter what low-income or middle-income voters think about a policy," Sunlight's Lee Drutman wrote. "They might favor it. They might oppose it. It has no real effect on how likely the policy is to happen." When the rich and the poor disagree on policy, Marty Gilens has shown, Washington basically sides with the rich.

[Flashermac]

Best government you can buy.

[Steve]

I wonder what the socio-political ramifications of the Zimmerman verdict will be? In Florida it wil likely get out the Black vote in bigger numbers. The Latino vote is a bit of curiosity to me. The Zimmerman case was seen as a Black/White issue but he is really latino or at least 50% and that was never mentioned much during the whole matter but I have to believe that Latinos are very much aware and are distancing themselves from that fact.

 

America has got more polarized during the Obama years. I have more than a few faults with Obama but in terms of racial polarizing he's not done that. His cabinet is centrist, even right of center. He's disappointed the far left. Gay rights is pretty much the only 'progressive', left of center thing he's championed in a big way and lets be honest about the reason. He's gotten a huge amount of gay money. Mostly in the guise of Enterainment money. So, gy marriage was what they wanted in return for their money. I'm not blaming them, I supported it terms of the law.

 

His presidency hasn't seen a boon in Black specific goodies either. There are a plethora of Black speakers and opinion makers who are very, very critical of Obama for not only not doing enough for the poor but see him as an establishment politician no different than any white establishiment politician. The community organizer, socialist that was feared on the right never materialized.

 

Anyway, my guess is it doesn't bode well for the Republicans. If they support immigration they may get some thing out of it but latinos will see any support as being done kicking and biting against their will.

 

Its sad we're becoming polarized yet again but its how this country has been at tmes throughout its history.

 

Its a fact that after his '08 election membership to Aryan, and other fringe groups exploded. Some people who thought they weren't as sympathetic to those groups joined out of fear. A fear that never materilzed but that's how you motivate groups. Fear. Fear of a group or imagined threat. It works on both sides of the ideological table.

[Flashermac]

Calling Zimmerman a "white Hispanic" was so clearly an attempt to make it racial. From what I've read, he is actually 1/8th black, but no one is calling him an "octoroon". Apparently, his mother is multi-racial - European, Native American and African ancestry. But the press invented a new term to portray as being white.

 

Charging Zimmerman with 2nd degree murder was clearly political - and almost impossible to prove. The prosecution had to convince the jury that he had deliberately set out to murder Martin, which was clearly not the case. But even the Florida police had originally suggested he be charged with manslaughter, using excessive and fatal force. I'd bet they could have nailed him on that one.

 

 

 

 

Sent to me by a friend. Presumably it is from a conservative site:

 

<< We're not celebrating the verdict. We have no idea if justice was served. We do think the facts of the case warranted this verdict. We may never know what exactly happened, which is exactly why a not guilty verdict was appropriate.

 

This weekend there will be violence from and against all races. We hope those on the left, like Al Sharpton, will be marching in the streets of Chicago next week protesting a white on white crime, or a black on black crime, or a black on Hispanic crime, or a white on Hispanic crime, etc.

 

What disturbs us about this case was the narrative created that a white, racist, gun nut, conservative, tea party type killed a 12-year-old black child. Once the facts came out that Zimmerman was a Hispanic life-long Democrat, and that Martin was 17 and 4" taller than Zimmerman, the left already had too much invested in this narrative about race.

 

This isn't to say Zimmerman in reality didn't murder an innocent young man--that's still completely possible, the evidence just didn't prove that point. When the evidence doesn't prove beyond a reasonable doubt, then the only outcome that honors our legal system is to find someone not guilty.

 

We don't think anyone should be celebrating and we don't think anyone should be outraged. None of us knows how it really went down. We dont know if justice was served, but we know that the verdict was appropriate. Whether we like it or not, we must accept and embrace the verdict. >>

[Plainsdrifter]

What this should teach us is that one should think twice before deciding to carry and/or keep a weapon whether it is a handgun or a samurai sword. In times of conflict one cannot control how one will react and with the addition of hot emotion the chance of deadly force being used cannot be controlled.

 

Just my opinion on this issue....

[Flashermac]

I remember how tense and short-tempered we came back from Vietnam. The problem was we hadn't been taught to fight. We'd been taught to do whatever was required for survival. An ex-Special Forces friend told me he carried a revolver in a shoulder holster - as he had in the Mekong Delta. Just felt uncomfortable without it. (I kept a shotgun next to my bed for years.) Joe told me he was in a bar chatting with a waitress, who apparently liked him. After a while, he heard 3 or 4 "good old boys" grumbling at a table in the corner. The waitress warned him that they were jealous of her attention and were talking about jumping him when he went outside. He managed to leave and avoid trouble, but he told me he stopped drinking after that. He said, "If they'd jumped me, I'd have shot in self-defence. But then I would have been charged with murder." He kept his weapon, but stayed out of bars and left alone the booze.

 

I don't think Zimmerman meant to kill Martin. He was on his back being pummelled, and he instinctively used his weapon to protect himself. I know a policeman who did the same thing. Only the cop was lucky, his assailant was an escaped con wanted for murder. Martin was a teenager.

[Steve]

Zimmerman was seen as 'white' socially. His dad was white and the black part of his mom's heritage means nothing. If you recall there was a one drop blood black law at one time. Conceivably someone who was shown to have the faintest black in them. Could have been a grandmother part black and even though they looked white in appearance they were considered black. So it was 'us' America that started this about race and such and who was white or what was considered white.

 

Jessica Alba is latina but she is passed as and marketed as white. Vin Diesel and the Rock have a lot of black blood. Not sure either, half or a quarter but are marketed as 'white' stars. Perception is everything.

 

In the Rodney King case, it was the culmination of Blacks who have said that they were targeted and abused by cops. The Martin/Zimmerman matter is also a response to Blacks who have said that Black males get stopped and questioned far more than anyone else based solely on race. NYC has been doing this for the last several years where there are college kids in NYC who dress and act like college kids who have been stopped several times, repeatedly based solely on race and crime stats.

 

Zimmerman appears to have targeted Martin based solely on his race and that targetting ended up with Martin dead. The facts whether they support Zimmerman is kinda immaterial to millions of Blacks who experience being questioned all the time. If we are honest we will say that if Martin was white its unlikely he would have been followedd.

 

I've posted here about being stopped in my suit and tie by cops in LA and this was before the Rodney King incident. Many blacks (as well as whites, latinos, etc.) are killed in the course of a crime. Those are never a point of contention because the person was obviously involved in a crime. Hundreds of times this happens. The ones that get the marches, and Jesse and Rev Al and the NAACP are ones that the cop or whomever seemed to kill a Black kid who was not a threat or could easily have been arrested without having to be killed. If it seems like racial animus involved. There are shootings of unarmed guys. Those get the marches, etc. There are tons of shootings that don't because they deserved it. They were pointing their gun or firing at cops. Trust me, Blacks don't care about them. Over 80% of Black crime is against other Blacks. Blacks want those folks in jail or dead.

[Flashermac]

"Zimmerman appears to have targeted Martin based solely on his race." Probably true, but residents of the mixed race neighbourhood said it had been hit with a series of burglaries, all committed by young black males. Martin fit the description and was followed.

[Steve]

I can't blame Zimmerman for being suspicious. As stated, the overwhelming majority of all violent crime is committed against those of the same racial/ethnic ancestory. I have more to fear from a Black criminal than any other race. Anyway, I have no problem with Zimmerman being suspicious. He did the right thing and called 911. He should have left it there. Don't follow, don't do anything else. I have seen PLENTY of suspicious people. I have NEVER thought to follow them. The LAST thing I want to do is follow them. Even if I had a gun.

 

What doesn't make sense is why Martin, a kid with no history of violence. A normal kid. He smoked pot and so did most of the guys in the dorms at my college. He was on his way home to his father, a disciplinarian by all acounts who would not have been happy had he delayed and got in trouble. For him to cause that to Zimmerman, logic and reason dictates that something Zimmerman said or did triggered him to do it. If, as we are told, he was in a murderous rage. Having a gun in some folks hands emboldens them.