Once again, the Ronald Reagan disciples trek back on a long arduous journey to the crypt of their polytheistic deity, or where ever worm-infested hole they have him hidden in, to worship him and to promise keeping his racial stereotype assault on poor welfare recipients just as he would have wanted.
You`ve probably heard or read something about today`s SNAP`s poster child named Jason Greenslate. Snap as we know it is the federal nutrition program known as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Benefits. I just ran into the Fox News crazies food stamps war on the poor and note that we have another FOOD STAMPS poster child. This one is not a Black person food stamp recipient. He is a young white man.
You might have already written a diary on Jason, but I insist on writing another. And I hope you do as well.
I cannot help but sneer reading about the new face that is a piña-colada-sipping, lobster-loving lothario named Jason Greenslate. Ah hum, on food stamps.
Sounds familiar to you? I know it does to me. I can clearly recall and understand the Republican strategy here. To demonize an entire group of needy poor citizens and seeking to starve children by using the failings of one single person. Because of this one lobster-loving lothario named Jason Greenslate Fox News video, whether you believe it or not, is the new Republican strategy to demonize all poor food stamps recipients, including hungry children.
This is not a new Republican strategy using a white lobster loving white man. It is the legacy of their fallen deity Ronald Reagan. These mean spirited Republicans are united, as always and they will succeed in cutting the food for the poor to feed themselves, regardless if its only one person who Fox News flashes on its screen.
I remember clearly, Ronald Reagan, the deity to all Republicans say exactly the same during his 1976 presidential campaign. He would tell the story of one single woman from Chicago's South Side who was arrested for welfare fraud:
"She has eighty names, thirty addresses, twelve Social Security cards and is collecting veteran's benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands. And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She's got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income is over $150,000."[4]
Reagan was indeed the great communicator as his disciples still love to remember him, I admit that much. But he specialized in the exaggerated, outrageous tales that were almost always unsubstantiated, usually false, yet so sensational that it merited repeated recounting… And because his ‘examples` of welfare queens drew on existing stereotypes of welfare cheats and resonated with news stories about welfare fraud, they did indeed gain real traction.
I take note of today`s Jason Greenslate. I take note also, that it is not too cool to go after the African American Snap beneficiary. It might not sound right. So here, they choose a young hippy looking surfer with no one to come fight this battle for him. One white young man on food stamps. And using one person`s failings on all food stamps recipients. The Reagan racist tone is turned down here and instead one white youth is trotted out in Reagan mode. But the attack is aimed at all SNAP recipients, which charge is targeted mostly on feeble hungry old folks, the disabled and children in general,
Reagan’s bogus tales of food stamps chiselers and welfare queens tended to employ racial imagery and often outright racist references to blacks (e.g., in telling a tale about food stamp fraud to a Southern audience, Reagan referred to a “young buck” (“buck” is a derogatory term used in the South to denote an African-American man) using his food stamps to buy T-bone steaks and to northern audiences he spoke of the apocryphal story of the “Cadillac-driving” Chicago welfare queen.
Here, in Jason`s sinful story, the crime is buying Lobster with food stamps. Same reference to fraud.
Reagan's anecdotes were a wild distortion of the welfare fraud case involving one Chicago woman named Linda Taylor. These bogus stories were a double whammy:
1. They worked to break off a significant chunk of the white working class (the “Reagan Democrats”) by appealing to their worst instincts and fears; and
2. They served as a justification for Reagan’s economically regressive policies.
Not surprisingly, Fox News broke the fair and balanced story News highlighting “the new face of food stamps" - when it has denigrated SNAP recipients for years. Its campaign came to a head in August when the network aired a misleading special titled,"The Great Food Stamps Binge" Their shoddy report focused on a clownish man named Jason Greenslate, "a blissfully jobless California surfer" who has taken advantage of SNAP benefits.
The surfer, unnamed in a memo Cantor circulated to GOP lawmakers earlier this month, is Jason Greenslate, 29. A Fox News report in August highlighted Greenslate, an unemployed musician perpetually in a cap and sunglasses, buying lobster rolls with $200-a-month benefits and laughing at the idea of a 9-to-5 job.
Conservative bloggers quickly cited Greenslate as a prime example of a flawed government program. But Democrats will counter that Greenslate is atypical of SNAP recipients, and they are expected to highlight more sympathetic beneficiaries.
Fox's effort may well have influenced the House Republicans' vote to cut $40 billion from the SNAP program. As USA Today reported:The bill would cause 3 million people to lose benefits while another 850,000 would see their benefits cut, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.
Ahhh, the Great Communicator would`ve been proud of his disciples.
Following a months-long campaign from Fox News to demonize food stamp recipients, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to cut $39 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The cuts would result in nearly 4 million Americans -- mostly elderly, children, and the disabled -- losing or seeing a reduction in their benefits.
It has sounded to me recently that Democrats believe the cuts will go forth.
Where is the rage from those we choose to represent us, and the poor, the children and the hungry?
I yield the floor.