Time and time again, the American public is subjected to racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise xenophobic comments made by those whose socio-demographic profiles equal privilege. Though women are also offenders (think Palin, Bachmann, Coulter), most often it seems to me the jaw-dropping comments are made by rich men—men wielding power and wanting more of it. To be sure, these aren’t gaffes, though sometimes the public backlash leads to an apology on the part of the offender. Sometimes, as in the case of Lou Dobbs and his anti-Latino immigrant bashing, it thankfully leads to job loss, but only after outcry and the work of progressive activists. Join me below the fold for the latest in good old American Hatred, this time from South Carolina’s lieutenant governor, Republican André Bauer.
msnbc reported today that André Bauer, in his quest to become South Carolina's next governor likened Americans on welfare to animals. Stray-animals to be precise. From msnbc (the brackets and emphases are mine):
At a town hall meeting Thursday [January 21, 2010], Bauer, who is running for governor in his own right now that [Governor Mark] Sanford is term-limited, said: "My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed! You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that."
Given the extramarital use of Mark Sanford's penis in South America at the expense of South Carolina taxpayers (talk about not thinking "much further than that"!), one might jokingly brush off Bauer's comment as a poorly veiled swipe at the governor. But I'm not laughing. Thanks to Bauer's political party—one whose policies have increased the number of people who are poor and in need of food, housing, employment, energy assistance, and/or medical aid—we have a fragile economy with more and more people, including South Carolinians, finding themselves on the wrong side of the rich-poor divide. Americans can thank André Bauer's party for this. With dehumanizing verbiage like Bauer's, one wonders what he has in mind for South Carolina should he become its next governor.
The poor in the South, including South Carolina, are not few in number as Richard D. Young's report shows [pdf]. Young notes the federal poverty level (FPL) of that state at the halfway point in George W. Bush's presidency:
South Carolina has a particularly high concentration of impoverished persons. The FPL for South Carolina, in 2004, was 15.7%. This equates to 659,097 persons. Further, the average 3-year poverty rate for 2001-2003 in South Carolina was 14.0%, equaling an average of 587,730 persons.
Since the Great Recession began, the unemployment rate in the Palmetto State has been among the highest nationally, as this mapped timeline shows.
Yes, the poor (and soon-to-be poor) are not small in number in South Carolina. No matter. Bauer, a University of South Carolina graduate, wants to starve them out of existence. They are after all nothing more to him than mangy street dogs. Wouldn't it be awfully ironic if André Bauer were "pro-life"? Oh, wait a minute, he is. Wouldn't it also be awfully ironic if Bauer himself benefited from public assistance? Wait a minute, he did: as a child Bauer received free school lunches. I get it: he's not a stray-dog, just everyone else who has ever received government assistance.
Men like Bauer say the hateful things that they say about the poor because not only do they believe them, but they believe that their hateful comments (coded racist words for sure) have street cred or "low spark". But they don't.
A few years ago the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) sponsored a survey of American opinion regarding poverty (the CCHD survey was conducted by International Communications Research). From Richard Young's report, here is what the CCHD found:
90% of respondents stated that they were concerned about poverty being a problem in the U.S. More specifically, 56% were very concerned and 34% were somewhat concerned. More than half (56%) of the survey respondents were concerned about being poor at some time in their lives. The percentage of respondents who were very concerned totaled 30%; those somewhat concerned were 26%...Additionally, those in the low-income category were more concerned about being poor at some time in their lives (74%) than their counterparts (50%).
In other words, people DON'T WANT TO BE POOR SO THEY CAN GET PUBLIC ASSISTANCE AND REPRODUCE LIKE ANIMALS, Mr. Bauer, WE FEAR BECOMING POOR, AND IT'S THE POOR WHO FEAR POVERTY THE MOST.
It's important to point out that the CCHD survey occurred before the U.S. housing market collapse began in 2007, before the international financial markets plunged in October, 2008, and before the rise in today's unemployment rates. These are economic calamities which are all the direct result of the Republican White House and the Republican-run Congress that ran this country (into the ground financially) from 2000 through 2008. These GOP-caused calamities have made people more anxious than ever about becoming poor.
Bauer should reflect on that reality before he goes spouting his mouth to would-be voters in his state about how poor people need to pick themselves up by their bootstraps without any assistance from the government. Bauer should also reflect on the effects the GOP's economic policies have had on America before he spouts off about his belief that a government should not help its people get out of poverty, because increasingly the good people of South Carolina are learning the hard way that Bauer's party works to only help people find a permanent home in poverty, not an escape from it.
UPDATE: This from South Carolina News (emphasis mine):
Bauer has been playing games with the citizens of South Carolina by trying to dodge the vileness of his remarks, which were delivered just the day after he submitted an amended financial report to the S.C. Ethics Commission that showed he had received thousands of dollars in free meals from restaurants and caterers in late 2009.