This is a day of celebration with family and loved ones to exchange gifts and exercise good will to all men. Next week we usher 2013 out and welcome 2014 with the hope of better things to come. It's nice to have a break from all the Washington craziness. However, it will be a brief reprieve before it's the New Year same old stuff in DC.
This Christmas has been a day of reflection of holidays and politics from the past. As Chris Matthews puts it (I am paraphrasing) when Washington worked and people from opposite sides of the aisle came together for the good of the American people. I can't blame him for writing books about the past, we needed a walk down memory lane. I took a personal walk that began when I was 10.
I
first heard the term “Welfare Queens” in 1976 in elementary school. The country
was celebrating its bicentennial. It was a banner year for kids in elementary
school. All of our school photos were taken with the Liberty Bell. I love
history. I studied the American Revolution with great zest. As a ten ear-old
the term “welfare queen” confused me. Both America and France fought revolution
to escape the tyranny of life ruled by a monarchy, there was a clear line of delineation
between the monarchs, aristocracy and everyone else. Therefore “welfare queen”
was an oxymoron to me although it apparently served as a great sound bite and
political arrow to pull from a quill.
I was raised around a very
politically astute family. Some argue my political views are jaded as many of
my relatives were and still are card carrying members of the N.A.A.C. P. While
true, they believed in arguing and discussing the facts regardless of race,
creed or political party. My paternal side has roots in Genoa Italy and my
maternal side has roots in England and Ireland, which allowed them a
certain level of impartiality though my mother’s family lived in the Jim Crow
South. When I posed the question, my father would have given me the answer but
off to the library I went. God love the Dewey Decimal System. Through research I
discovered the term was coined by then California Governor Ronald Reagan during
his first presidential run about women who’d committed welfare fraud.
These welfare queens women operated with
impunity, used numerous names, addresses, social security numbers, received
veteran’s benefits from fictional dead husbands, used food stamps, Medicaid and
collected a tax free income in excess of 100,000.00. For reasons I’m still
unsure of all of these women were African American, lived on the South Side of
Chicago and drove Cadillacs.
At the time a Department of Social
Services was about minutes from my house. I never saw 1 Cadillac in the parking
lot. African Americans were painted with broad stroke to polarize the
electorate and sow the seeds of discontent over federally and state funded
social programs designed to help needy people. The number of regular folks who
commit welfare fraud only make up a small fraction of people on welfare/public
assistance but why let facts get in the way of a good wedge issue.
It’s been 37 years and I’m left to
wonder if Washington is in the United States or another galaxy. I lean toward
the latter. After a collapse not seen since the Great Depression, the face of
the stereotypical recipient has lightened in color and hit the middle class.
People who never guessed in a million years they’d need unemployment benefits, SNAP,
Social Security and Medicaid need help. Now
a certain faction in the House didn’t extend unemployment benefits,
characterizing the help as a deterrent to look for a job. They are the Emperors
of Unemployment perched on their sofa/throne watching television and waiting
for their benefit checks which is half what they made when they worked and
brought home a paycheck. If anything, they are more motivated to find work to
pay the bills and maintain a place to live and put food on the table. It’s
obvious this political faction hasn’t been in a grocery store in years and
wouldn’t know how to use a coupon if it bit them in the posterior.
Politicians who boldly espouse
ideas on how children who get free lunch should also be part-time janitors to
earn their lunch money should look in the mirror. The only place where
receiving checks without doing any real work is the 113th Congress.
In fact, they’re is on track to become the least productive Congress in
history. Although you might say given their current record, they’re experts on lazy people collecting checks.
My great grandmother would say if you don’t work, you don’t eat. If only we
could tie Congress’ pay to their productivity. There were no social programs
for my great grandmother as a widow with 8 children before the New Deal. She
scraped by in order to take care of her family and her older children pitched
in. When the New Deal became a reality, she had avenues to turn to for help and
not one of her children developed a dependency on social programs.
The same politicians who want to
attack government social programs benefited from the New Deal. Very few
families had money during the Great Depression. Once wealthy families became
destitute overnight. There was no safety net. If these politicians look back a
couple of generations, they’d see their families benefited from the safety net
to get back on their feet. However, it seems that once they were upright, they
suddenly developed social program amnesia and passed it like a family trait
based on DNA. For God’s sake they shut the government down for 2 weeks and cost
Americans 25 billion dollars.
I am a New York liberal and
progressive Democrat. As much as I support President Obama, I have to call him
on the carpet for capitulating in situations where he clearly had a mandate
from the country to move us in the right direction. We reelected him for a
second term. If that doesn’t give him the gravitas he needs nothing will.
As for the political Tea Party it is
devoid of etiquette, kindness, manners and good sense. Their views on America
should send them to a tea party in Alice in Wonderland’s as most of what they say is fictional
and belongs in a rabbit hole.
The idea of putting down American citizens as lazy and shiftless looking for government handouts is shameful. Considering the amount of corporate welfare handed out. Corporate
welfare is defined as financial aid, such as a subsidy or tax break, provided
by a government to corporations or other businesses. If politicians persist in
calling SNAP recipients and the unemployed as takers, they should be prepared
to corral all the takers. However, unlike the mythical welfare queen and
emperors of unemployment, we can trot out real life examples of corporate
welfare in the form of tax breaks and private jets just to name a few Cadillac
like perks.
So Washington take note. We are done
with a capital D. Stop the stereotyping and name calling. You weren’t elected to
play games in the Capitol building. You were elected/hired by us to work and
like any good employer who notes employees who slack off on the job, we’ll hand
you your pink slips in November regardless of the unconscionable thing done to
the Voter’s Right Act. Where there’s a will there’s a way. Remember that. We
will.
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