Paul Ryan Blames Poverty On Lazy ‘Inner City’ Men

Proving once again that he is a complete asshole, Paul Ryan - a man born to wealth who never had to worry about money or finding a job given his family's business - is once again sending a coded racist message that poverty is the fault of the victims.  I'm sure his effort to blame poverty on "lazy inner city men" pays well with the GOP's increasingly elderly white Christofascist base. As for the Catholic religious beliefs that Ryan claims to live by, his bias and efforts to slash social safety net programs show the utter hypocrisy of Ryan's feigned religiosity.  Ryan also conveniently ignores that the Congressional GOP has consistently blocked programs that might have improved the economy  and generated more jobs in the GOP quest to trash the economy to hurt Barack Obama's reelection chances.  Think Progress looks at this latest attack by Ryan on the poor.  Here are excerpts:

House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) previewed his upcoming legislative proposals for reforming America’s poverty programs during an appearance on Bill Bennett’s Morning in America Wednesday, hinting that he would focus on creating work requirements for men “in our inner cities” and dealing with the “real culture problem” in these communities. “We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work, and so there is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with,” he said.

Ryan also cited Charles Murray, a conservative social scientist who believes African-Americans are, as a population, less intelligent than whites due to genetic differences and that poverty remains a national problem because “a lot of poor people are born lazy.”

Ryan’s comments come a week after he released a 204-page report analyzing the effectiveness of the nation’s anti-poverty programs 50 years after President Lyndon Johnson declared a national War on Poverty. The former GOP vice presidential candidate, who argues that federal anti-poverty programs have contributed to the nation’s high poverty rate and “created what’s known as the poverty trap,” is expected to offer reforms to the programs in his upcoming FY 2015 budget.

Numerous anti-poverty initiatives already include work requirements, particularly long-term unemployment insurance and the Earned Income Tax Credit. Other programs, such as Head Start, allow parents to go to work while their children attend education programs. 

Work requirements have yet to significantly reduce poverty, particularly during a downturn economy. While Ryan touts the success of lowering the number of people on welfare after 1996, poverty has actually increased since the recession and the number of families whose incomes are below half the poverty line (less than $12,000 a year for a family of four) is actually higher now than it was when Congress and President Bill Clinton enacted welfare reform. Welfare’s rigid work requirements improved employment among single mothers initially, but those rates started to decline by 2001, once the economy went into recession. The work provisions also pressure some women to abandon the higher education that could lead to upward mobility in favor of lower-paying jobs that meet the law’s standards.

The Political War Over Poverty

Even as the Republican Party continues to wage war on the poor (through food stamp cuts and ending unemployment benefits among other things), a political war is being waged over who is responsible for the failure of the "War on Poverty."  Most in the GOP continue to blame the poor themselves, claiming that the poor are lazy and shiftless, etc.   They never admit that America's system of capitalism treats too many citizens as disposable trash.  A column in the New York Times looks at this political war over responsibility.  Here are excerpts:

Fifty years have passed since Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty. And a funny thing happened on the way to this anniversary. Suddenly, or so it seems, progressives have stopped apologizing for their efforts on behalf of the poor, and have started trumpeting them instead. And conservatives find themselves on the defensive.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. For a long time, everyone knew — or, more accurately, “knew” — that the war on poverty had been an abject failure. And they knew why: It was the fault of the poor themselves. But what everyone knew wasn’t true, and the public seems to have caught on.

The narrative went like this: Antipoverty programs hadn’t actually reduced poverty, because poverty in America was basically a social problem — a problem of broken families, crime and a culture of dependence that was only reinforced by government aid. And because this narrative was so widely accepted, bashing the poor was good politics, enthusiastically embraced by Republicans

[T]he war on poverty has, in fact, achieved quite a lot. It’s true that the standard measure of poverty hasn’t fallen much. But this measure doesn’t include the value of crucial public programs like food stamps and the earned-income tax credit. Once these programs are taken into account, the data show a significant decline in poverty, and a much larger decline in extreme poverty. Other evidence also points to a big improvement in the lives of America’s poor: lower-income Americans are much healthier and better-nourished than they were in the 1960s.

And if progress against poverty has nonetheless been disappointingly slow — which it has — blame rests not with the poor but with a changing labor market, one that no longer offers good wages to ordinary workers. Wages used to rise along with worker productivity, but that linkage ended around 1980. The bottom third of the American work force has seen little or no rise in inflation-adjusted wages since the early 1970s; the bottom third of male workers has experienced a sharp wage decline. This wage stagnation, not social decay, is the reason poverty has proved so hard to eradicate.

[T]he problem of poverty has become part of the broader problem of rising income inequality, of an economy in which all the fruits of growth seem to go to a small elite, leaving everyone else behind.

So how should we respond to this reality?  The conservative position, essentially, is that we shouldn’t respond. Conservatives are committed to the view that government is always the problem, never the solution; they treat every beneficiary of a safety-net program as if he or she were “a Cadillac-driving welfare queen.” And why not? After all, for decades their position was a political winner, because middle-class Americans saw “welfare” as something that Those People got but they didn’t.

But that was then. At this point, the rise of the 1 percent at the expense of everyone else is so obvious that it’s no longer possible to shut down any discussion of rising inequality with cries of “class warfare.” Meanwhile, hard times have forced many more Americans to turn to safety-net programs. And as conservatives have responded by defining an ever-growing fraction of the population as morally unworthy “takers” — a quarter, a third, 47 percent, whatever — they have made themselves look callous and meanspirited.

Republicans are still opposed to extended benefits, despite high long-term unemployment. But they have, revealingly, changed their arguments. Suddenly, it’s not about forcing those lazy bums to find jobs; it’s about fiscal responsibility. And nobody believes a word of it.

Meanwhile, progressives are on offense. They have decided that inequality is a winning political issue. They see war-on-poverty programs like food stamps, Medicaid, and the earned-income tax credit as success stories, initiatives that have helped Americans in need — especially during the slump since 2007 — and should be expanded.

On its 50th birthday, the war on poverty no longer looks like a failure. It looks, instead, like a template for a rising, increasingly confident progressive movement. 

News bulletin: the conservatives ARE callous and mean spirited even as they pat themselves on the back for their piety and alleged support for Christian principles.  They are hypocrites and modern day Pharisees.  That's one of the reasons I want nothing to do with today's GOP.

  

The GOP's War on the Poor

Few things disgust me more than the Republican Party's disingenuous claims to allegiance to Christian values while in reality at the same time throwing Christ's Gospel message on the trash heap.   The principal beneficiaries of the GOP agenda?  The rich and large corporations.  The losers? The poor in particular, and to a lesser extent, everyone else.   And who makes up the core of the fanatical GOP base?  You guessed it, the Christofascists and their Tea Party first cousins.  An op-ed piece in the New York Times looks at the rank hypocrisy of the GOP and the menace that it poses to the most vulnerable members of society.   Here are highlights:

John Kasich, the Republican governor of Ohio, has done some surprising things lately. First, he did an end run around his state’s Legislature — controlled by his own party — to proceed with the federally funded expansion of Medicaid that is an important piece of Obamacare. Then, defending his action, he let loose on his political allies, declaring, “I’m concerned about the fact there seems to be a war on the poor. That, if you’re poor, somehow you’re shiftless and lazy.”

Obviously Mr. Kasich isn’t the first to make this observation. But the fact that it’s coming from a Republican in good standing (although maybe not anymore), indeed someone who used to be known as a conservative firebrand, is telling. Republican hostility toward the poor and unfortunate has now reached such a fever pitch that the party doesn’t really stand for anything else — and only willfully blind observers can fail to see that reality. 

The big question is why. But, first, let’s talk a bit more about what’s eating the right. 

I still sometimes see pundits claiming that the Tea Party movement is basically driven by concerns about budget deficits. That’s delusional. Read the founding rant by Rick Santelli of CNBC: There’s nary a mention of deficits. Instead, it’s a tirade against the possibility that the government might help “losers” avoid foreclosure. Or read transcripts from Rush Limbaugh or other right-wing talk radio hosts. There’s not much about fiscal responsibility, but there’s a lot about how the government is rewarding the lazy and undeserving.

Republicans in leadership positions try to modulate their language a bit, but it’s a matter more of tone than substance. They’re still clearly passionate about making sure that the poor and unlucky get as little help as possible, that — as Representative Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, put it — the safety net is becoming “a hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency.” And Mr. Ryan’s budget proposals involve savage cuts in safety-net programs such as food stamps and Medicaid. 

All of this hostility to the poor has culminated in the truly astonishing refusal of many states to participate in the Medicaid expansion. Bear in mind that the federal government would pay for this expansion, and that the money thus spent would benefit hospitals and the local economy as well as the direct recipients. But a majority of Republican-controlled state governments are, it turns out, willing to pay a large economic and fiscal price in order to ensure that aid doesn’t reach the poor. 

[I]t wasn’t always this way. Go back for a moment to 1936, when Alf Landon received the Republican nomination for president. . . . . : “Out of this Depression has come, not only the problem of recovery but also the equally grave problem of caring for the unemployed until recovery is attained. Their relief at all times is a matter of plain duty. We of our Party pledge that this obligation will never be neglected.” 

Can you imagine a modern Republican nominee saying such a thing? Not in a party committed to the view that unemployed workers have it too easy, that they’re so coddled by unemployment insurance and food stamps that they have no incentive to go out there and get a job. 

So what’s this all about? . . . .  some leading Republicans are, in their minds, acting out adolescent libertarian fantasies. “It’s as if we’re living in an Ayn Rand novel right now,” declared Paul Ryan in 2009. 

But there’s also, as Mr. Little says, the stain that won’t go away: race. . . . .  the Republican base “very conscious of being white in a country that is increasingly minority” — and seeing the social safety net both as something that helps Those People, not people like themselves, and binds the rising nonwhite population to the Democratic Party. And, yes, the Medicaid expansion many states are rejecting would disproportionately have helped poor blacks. 

So there is indeed a war on the poor, coinciding with and deepening the pain from a troubled economy. And that war is now the central, defining issue of American politics. 

There's a related cause not cited by the author that I believe is directly involved: the rise of the Christofascists who are almost all white and semi-closeted white supremacists.  These folks not only are killing the GOP brand.  They are also killing Christianity in America.  Their conduct is the antithesis of Christ's gospel message.  They are horrid people and anything but truly Christian.

GOP Ohio Governor Defies G.O.P. With Defense of Social Safety Net

I often note the hypocrisy of the Republican Party and its Christofascist/Tea Party base who wrap themselves in feigned religiosity and claim to honor Christian values even as they seek to destroy America's already inadequate social safety net and pursue agendas 180 degrees opposite of the Gospel message of aiding the sick, housing the homeless and feeding the hungry.  These modern day Pharisees care only about themselves and forcing extreme views on all citizens.  Their war on Medicaid expansion is but one example.  Hence the surprise of seeing Ohio Governor John R. Kasich lambaste the GOP for what he describes as a war on the poor.  Whether or not Kasich merely sees the GOP agenda as ultimately fatal in the political future or not remains to be seen.  Here are highlights from a piece in the New York Times:

COLUMBUS, Ohio — In his grand Statehouse office beneath a bust of Lincoln, Gov. John R. Kasich let loose on fellow Republicans in Washington. 

“I’m concerned about the fact there seems to be a war on the poor,” he said, sitting at the head of a burnished table as members of his cabinet lingered after a meeting. “That if you’re poor, somehow you’re shiftless and lazy.” 

“You know what?” he said. “The very people who complain ought to ask their grandparents if they worked at the W.P.A.” 

Ever since Republicans in Congress shut down the federal government in an attempt to remove funding for President Obama’s health care law, Republican governors have been trying to distance themselves from Washington. 

But few have gone further than Mr. Kasich in critiquing his party’s views on poverty programs, and last week he circumvented his own Republican legislature and its Tea Party wing by using a little-known state board to expand Medicaid to 275,000 poor Ohioans under President Obama’s health care law. 

Once a leader of the conservative firebrands in Congress under Newt Gingrich in the 1990s, Mr. Kasich has surprised and disarmed some former critics on the left with his championing of Ohio’s disadvantaged, which he frames as a matter of Christian compassion.

[H]e defies many conservatives in believing government should ensure a strong social safety net. In his three years as governor, he has expanded programs for the mentally ill, fought the nursing home lobby to bring down Medicaid costs and backed Cleveland’s Democratic mayor, Frank Jackson, in raising local taxes to improve schools. 

To some Ohio analysts, those moves are a reaction to the humiliating defeat Mr. Kasich suffered in 2011 when voters in a statewide referendum overturned a law stripping public employees of bargaining rights. Before the vote, Mr. Kasich’s approval in this quintessential swing state plunged.

Now, as the governor’s image has softened, his poll numbers have improved heading into a re-election race next year against the likely Democratic nominee, Ed FitzGerald, the executive of Cuyahoga County. 

“This is someone who realized he had to get to the center and chose Medicaid as the issue,” said Danny Kanner, communications director of the Democratic Governors Association. “That doesn’t erase the first three years of his governorship when he pursued polices that rewarded the wealthy at the expense of the middle class.” 

Ohioans earning in the top 1 percent will see a $6,000 tax cut under the latest budget passed by the Republican-led legislature, while those in the bottom fifth will see a $12 increase, according to Policy Matters Ohio, an independent research group. 

The governor dismissed the notion that his Medicaid decision was political. “I have an opportunity to do good, to lift people, and that’s what I’m going to do,” he said.

In the interview in his office, he criticized a widespread conservative antipathy toward government social programs, which regards the safety net as enabling a “culture of dependency.”  Mr. Kasich, who occasionally sounds more like an heir to Lyndon B. Johnson than to Ronald Reagan, urged sympathy for “the lady working down here in the doughnut shop that doesn’t have any health insurance — think about that, if you put yourself in their shoes.” 

He said it made no sense to turn down $2.5 billion in federal Medicaid funds over the next two years, a position backed by state hospitals and Ohio businesses.

The governor, whose brother is mentally ill, spoke of how Medicaid would get more people into treatment, decreasing the homeless and prison populations. 

“For those who live in the shadows of life, for those who are the least among us,” Mr. Kasich said in a February speech, echoing the Bible, “I will not accept the fact that the most vulnerable in our state should be ignored.” 

In some ways, his balancing act has scrambled the usual ideological alliances. A Wall Street Journal editorial last week mocked his religion-based explanation for expanding Medicaid and labeled him “the Apostle Kasich.”  But mental health groups that usually find Democrats more sympathetic are cheering.

Whatever his motives, Kasich's behavior is reminiscent of how Republicans once acted before the rise of the Christofascists and the Tea Party Neanderthals.