{"id":12928,"date":"2014-06-04T00:09:24","date_gmt":"2014-06-04T07:09:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=12928"},"modified":"2014-06-04T00:15:00","modified_gmt":"2014-06-04T07:15:00","slug":"let-them-eat-koch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/04\/let-them-eat-koch\/","title":{"rendered":"Let Them Eat Koch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marie Antoinette got a bad rap for the statement “Let them Eat Cake.”  The statement was actually made my the wife of Louis XIV, Marie Thérèse<\/a>.  So even if she is the wrong Marie. she still ende3d up a head shorter because of it.  The statement itself represents a callous disregard for the suffering of the common people.  That disregard is reflected by many in the 1% and the Republican Party represents them.  I found a fascinating article analyzing nine questions 1% Republicans use to blame the poor for the suffering that they cause.  Here is just one of them.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"0604Marie-Antoinette\"…Shouldn't we cut public assistance and force people into the job market?<\/strong><\/p>\n

At some point in any discussion of jobs, someone will drop the nuclear option: cut federal and state benefits and do away with most public assistance. That'll motivate people to find jobs — or starve. Unemployment money and food stamps (now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP<\/a>) encourage people to be lazy. Why should tax dollars be used to give food to people who won't work for it? “If you’re able-bodied, you should be willing to work,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said<\/a> discussing food stamp cuts.<\/p>\n

The problem with such statements is 73%<\/a> of those enrolled in the country’s major public benefits programs are, in fact, from working families — just in jobs whose paychecks don’t cover life’s basic necessities. McDonald’s workers alone receive $1.2 billion<\/a> in federal assistance per year.<\/p>\n

Why do so many of the employed need food stamps? It’s not complicated. Workers in the minimum-wage economy often need them simply to survive. All in all, 47 million<\/a> people get SNAP nationwide because without it they would go hungry.<\/p>\n

In Ohio, where I did some of the research for my book Ghosts of Tom Joad<\/a>, the state pays out benefits on the first of each month. Pay Day, Food Day, Mother’s Day, people call it. SNAP is distributed in the form of an Electronic Bank Transfer card, or EBT<\/a>, which, recipients will tell you, stands for “Eat Better Tonight.” EBT-friendly stores open early and stay open late on the first of the month because most people are pretty hungry come the Day.<\/p>\n

A single person with nothing to her name in the lower 48 states would qualify for no more than $189<\/a> a month in SNAP. If she works, her net monthly income is multiplied by .3, and the result is subtracted from the maximum allotment. Less than fifty bucks a week for food isn’t exactly luxury fare. Sure, she can skip a meal if she needs to, and she likely does. However, she may have kids; almost two-thirds<\/a> of SNAP children live in single-parent households. Twenty percent<\/a> or more of the child population in 37 states lived in “food insecure households” in 2011, with New Mexico (30.6%) and the District of Columbia (30%) topping the list. And it's not just<\/a> kids. Households with disabled people account for 16% of SNAP benefits, while 9% go to households with senior citizens.<\/p>\n

Almost 22%<\/a> of American children under age 18 lived in poverty in 2012; for those under age five, it’s more than 25%. Almost 1 in 10 live in extreme poverty.<\/p>\n

Our system is trending toward asking kids (and the disabled, and the elderly) to go to hell if they're hungry. Many are already there…<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Alternet<\/a>><\/p>\n

As long as this excerpt appears, it is just a very small part of a very large article.  You owe it to yourselves to read it in it’s entirety to prepare you to handle the Republican lies you will hear over and over again.  I urge you to click through.<\/font><\/p>\n

Finally the quote falsely attributed to Marie Antoinette is no longer appropriate.  It should be upgraded to Let Them Eat Koch!<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marie Antoinette got a bad rap for the statement “Let them Eat Cake.”  The statement was actually made my the wife of Louis XIV, Marie Thérèse.  So even if she is the wrong Marie. she still ende3d up a head shorter because of it.  The statement itself represents a callous disregard for the suffering of […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12928\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}