The New York Times apparently went to sleep after the inaguration and just woke up in Minnesota:
Ki Gulbranson owns a logo apparel shop, deals in jewelry on the side and referees youth soccer games. He makes about $39,000 a year and wants you to know that he does not need any help from the federal government.
He says that too many Americans lean on taxpayers rather than living within their means. He supports politicians who promise to cut government spending. In 2010, he printed T-shirts for the Tea Party campaign of a neighbor, Chip Cravaack, who ousted this region’s long-serving Democratic congressman.
Yet this year, as in each of the past three years, Mr. Gulbranson, 57, is counting on a payment of several thousand dollars from the federal government, a subsidy for working families called the earned-income tax credit. He has signed up his three school-age children to eat free breakfast and lunch at federal expense. And Medicare paid for his mother, 88, to have hip surgery twice.
I guess the Statute of Relevance has expired on the fact that Teabaggers yelling at party rallies were doing so from the comfort of Medicare scooters, so now it’s OK for the Times to report that the true patriots who voted out Democrats like Jim Oberstar would be living in poverty, or at least misery, without government assistance. Since Democrats were able to hold off the Teabagger House these clowns elected, they’ll be able to keep a roof over their heads, have their kids well fed, and pay for gas to drive to meetings where their new Congressman assures them all that they’re makers, not takers.
cathyx
These people won’t learn until their own government handouts stop coming. Then it will be too late.
middlewest
The cancer killing Minnesota. We used to be so smug about our standard of living, and then these guys happened. I know it’s an entire country thing, but somehow it hurts more in the one state that never voted for St. Reaganus.
debbie
Nothing but hypocrisy in that article from the people grabbing their “rightful” share while wanting to deny the same from others. NYT put a mirror up to them, and that can’t be anything but good.
rufflesinc
The guy’s trying to raise five kids on 40k, ostensibly without govt assistance. You can’t even raise one kid on 100k a year anymore, what with loss of second income, day care, preschool, private school or premium for house with good schools, and college.
debbie
Too early: “for others”
gravie
IOKIYAR. Or a TB.
MattF
There’s a certain grim logic to the Tea Party view– the future looks dim, and a lot of people in the next generation are going to need help of one kind or another. The place you want to be in the coming world is closest to the well and making the rules.
Derelict
Of course he doesn’t need anything from the government! He’s living like a king on $39,000 a year! And I’m sure he’s saving a bundle for his retirement. And for the medical insurance he’ll need once Paul Ryan’s plan becomes reality. And . . .
. . . I hope he’s really boning up on the best ways to catch sparrows and pigeons and the best recipes for roasting them on curtain rods while huddled under a railroad bridge.
PeakVT
I don’t understand how people can be so self-unaware. Maybe it’s a defense mechanism of some sort.
HRA
@rufflesinc:
That is the truth. The other truth is he may possibly be hiding other income which he does not declare and he is not unique.
He is also not too intelligent. Somewhere, sometime and even sooner rather than later the IRS will begin to wonder about it. More so now that he has made it public.
scav
@Derelict:
Bridges in MN? not a good idea for being under. Infrastructure being one of those onerous things some don’t want to waste money on . . . .
The muted whining noise heard from the NYT about the horrors of First Class Airline travel not being what it once was is to be noted in passing.
AlladinsLamp
If only the Gov’t would cut spending on the benefits it gives to shiftless people like Gulbranson, then enterprising types like Gulbranson would sell more apparel and jewelry and not need the benefits like those Gulbranson recieves.
Phylllis
@debbie: I heard this a good bit when I worked for social services. “But I need the help, I’m not taking it just because I’m eligible for it.” My all-time favorite came from a co-worker, who Got mad at me because I wouldn’t bend the rules for her daughter to receive the family planning card that would pay for the daughter’s birth control* “But she’ll actually use it.”
*Said co-worker being one of the loudest to complain about welfare fraud, and governmental fraud in general.
Villago Delenda Est
@HRA:
This, right here, is the hallmark of the teabagger.
Villago Delenda Est
@AlladinsLamp:
DING DING DING DING DING!
Walker
I think having five children while you earn $40k counts as an American living beyond their means.
I am sure there are childless couples making good money who could help him live within his means.
debit
@PeakVT: It’s stupidity. I related a story the other day about a client came in to drop off his taxes. He’s a Tea Bagger that had an unsuccessful run for City Council last cycle. He was bitching, as people do when having their taxes done, about how much of “their” money is wasted. “Here’s an example,” he said. “You know how there have been robberies at the Lake Street light rail station, right? So the MTC conducts some study and decides, get this, that the best way to deter crime is to have people there, playing classical music! They are paying people to sit the at the station and play Bach and crap! How many thousands of MY dollars are they wasting with this shit? Can you believe it?”
I couldn’t, because there isn’t anyone stupid enough to pay people to sit outside in Minnesota 24 hours a day to play music. So I did a quick search of the local paper’s website and found an article that matched his story except for one important detail. The MTC spent $150 dollars for a copyright free recording of classical music that plays on loudspeakers. I shared this with him and watched him deflate. “Oh,” he said. “Well, I guess that’s okay.”
This guy runs his own business and actually ran for election. I weep for our future.
scav
OT, or more likely, back to the everlasting T, just think what the NYT put under the heading of Republicans Retreat on Domestic Violence? Well, it includes
Hey! a three-fer! Women, Gheys (defined large) and Immigrants!
cathyx
@Walker: So true. I’m raising one kid and it’s near impossible sometimes to make ends meet. The side jewelry business must be better than is being reported.
Villago Delenda Est
Oh, btw mistermix…nice BadCo reference!
Emrventures
I have a hard time not feeling contempt for people on the dole who complain about big government. I’m not rich, and I’m a democrat who favors a real safety net and am willing to pay for it, for reasons of both compassion and economics.
But for a dbag like Ki Gulbranson, not so much. For better or worse, though, he’s got kids, and they deserve a chance.
Kirbster
No doubt Gulbranson also bitterly complains that “Washington is broken,” even though that is exactly what he voted for. Spite is its own reward.
PurpleGirl
If Mr. Gulbranson doesn’t want the help he shouldn’t apply for it. All he has to do is NOT fill out the forms. It’s not like the government knows who’s having trouble and just sends the check unasked for.
And to the 70-something year old in the first video: The one time he was unemployed and got $17.00 for one day — that must have been a long time ago and he probably wasn’t in a very well-paying job. Because whether he knows it or not, your benefit is based on what your salary was. Somebody getting $500 a week was getting the maximum benefit.
Goddess, these idiots should all win Darwin Awards cause they are too dumb to live.
PeakVT
@debit: Great story. I’m curious as how the rumor that actual people were playing was started. Was it a deliberate lie by some Limbaugh-type, or just stupidity.
Walker
I am all for safety nets when kids are involved. However, what gets me is how blatantly racist it all is. If it is a black woman, then clearly she has the child just to collect the welfare check. But for that Catholic family with nine kids, it is the government’s fault that they cannot make ends meet.
Egg Berry
first they came for the classical musicians playing in the Minnesota light rail stations, and I said nothing because I hate classical music*.
*not really
honus
@scav: “what the NYT put under the heading of Republicans Retreat on Domestic Violence”
When I first read that I thought that the Repubicans were holding a retreat to study solutions to domestic violence. What was wrong with the perfectively descriptive headline “Republicans unanimous in vote against domestic violence bill?”
scav
@honus: It’s their NYT nuanced journalism in action.
debit
@PeakVT: He said he heard it on the radio, but didn’t make it clear if he just misunderstood or if someone actually claimed there would be live musicians. Either way, you have to be pretty credulous to think anyone (who wasn’t a busker) would agree to sit outside in Minnesota in the winter and attempt to play an instrument.
Schlemizel
I’m not in favor of turning the flying monkeys loose but I do hope this moran has some friends or customers that will stop by an explain to him that he is one of the takers, a leech, a drain on decent society – you know, the exact things he would say to people who use the social safety net
Walker
By the way, is the $500 unemployment thing a meme somewhere? I was visiting a reliable blue collar Democrat (a Cuomo-style Democrat) yesterday and he brought this up.
Roger Moore
@honus:
It doesn’t point out that this kind of thing used to be uncontroversial and get plenty of Republican votes. Anything that points out the Republicans are giving up on sensible things they used to support is good in my book.
honus
@scav: Check out Bruni and the Moustache of Understanding today. After lamenting that the republican party is so off the rails it can’t address the problems we face today, he advocates that we need a new republican party to… support programs that the democrats have been proposing for years, and that the republicans have been systematically killing:
Eisenhower and GHW Bush are his model republicans. Eisenhower of course was an ex-democrat who presided over the highest marginal income tax rate (Kennedy cut the top bracket rate from 95% to 70%) in our history and an enormous spending plan for the expansion of our infrastructure, which is named after him.
Schlemizel
@middlewest:
I grew up in MN but opportunities got me to Florida and I was stunned at how awful government could be, how stupid, spiteful, greedy and self-centered voters could be. FL seemed to attract people who couldn’t wait to push others onto the ice flow as long as they got theirs. It was not retirees it was the culture they built there.
I moved back to MN and the change was even more stunning. We used to know we had to rely on each other to get through the hard times & we needed to build for the future. Not any more. The morans are winning even in places where we are not that far removed from comparisons between decent government and morans like Tim Pawlenty letting people die because he won’t spend a dime to repair a bridge
JohnK
Gulbranson and crew are overcome by their personal shame of being poor and having to accept help from government programs. If the programs go away, it will make their shame go away. They want ereryone to know the shame doesn’t belong on them. They need to be something they will never be and have decided to blame the tax payer programs that can and will help them.
GregB
You know who else played classical music at train stations?
Schlemizel
@honus:
They want this ‘new’ GOP instead of the already available Dems because they know this new GOP will perform this miracle without raising their taxes.
We are left asking – stupid or liars?
Dr. Squid
@debit: Jeez, it’s not like he’s going to lower himself to go to any light rail station, much less actually trundle up the stairs so he can stand near a bunch of *gasp* immigrants. (Yes, I’m familiar with the neighborhood. Why do you ask?)
PurpleGirl
@Walker: Probably, the Republicans want everyone to think that the unemployed are just getting sooooo much money they don’t want to go back to work. But the NYS maximum is currently $400 a week. While there was ARRA stimulus money everybody got an extra $25.00 a week. NYS’s benefit is good but not great. I don’t where the different levels are situated on the scale, though. But when I was unemployed in the mid-1990s, I’d been making around $34,000 and I got the maximum then too. The maximum at that point was, IIRC, $300 a week.
PurpleGirl
@Schlemizel: How about both? Being stupid and being a liar aren’t mutually exclusive.
Trakker
I’ll bet most Tea Partiers like Gulbranson assume that because they work hard, are good citizens (and are white, but I repeat myself), they have earned any government benefits they receive. Unlike the government payouts given to the, um, not-white people who, “everyone knows, are just lazy, pampered parasites living on the government money given to them by the Democrats in return for their votes” (yeah, like poor people vote).
Rafer Janders
@honus:
provided we invest in better infrastructure, postsecondary education for all, more talented immigrants, regulations that incentivize risk-taking and prevent recklessness, and government-financed research to push out the boundaries of science and let our venture capitalists pluck the best flowers.
Oh, if only there was a political party in America that supported exactly these sorts of programs!
Schlemizel
@PurpleGirl:
Given how stupid the lies are you may have hit the nail there
Schlemizel
@Rafer Janders:
I can’t read that dipshit, have not been able to in quite a while. Wife will leave me if the screaming fits continue 8-{D Dang I don’t like to wish ill on others but I really wish something would happen to make him stop writing. Ideally it would be that society wises up and humiliates him publicly but its getting to the point I would settle for a can accident.
kay
I think it’s a great, but not to show the bankruptcy of the Tea Party.
Everyone except Dave Weigel knows the Tea Party is bankrupt.
I like it because it exposes the lie that these programs are for “the poor”.
Medicare, Medicaid, food subsidies, tax subsidies, SCHIP, ALL of these programs are used by working class people.
The SAME working class people that idiot pundits insist liberals can’t win over.
“The poor” is a lie. Working class people ARE ” the poor”.
scav
@honus: Oh GSD, I’m now officially into class ultra rage management mode. That’s ok: I can manage this. I can outlast them. I will be the tri-athlete of continuing to get in their faces. I’ll cross-train in the biathalon. Where’s my shovel?
walt
The mind-fuck that Republicans have played on the white working class tells them they’re producers unlike those shiftless minorities from the wrong side of the tracks. It’s why Fox News, Drudge, and Rush have a near-constant racist subtext to their infotainment. The only way you get these folks to vote against their own economic interests is by tweaking a more primal nerve ending than logic. Say fear and loathing.
The only hope for America is outlasting these dimwits. I don’t want anyone to die prematurely. But our nation would be very lucky if some of these people were denied the Medicare they want to deny others.
Roger Moore
@Schlemizel:
It wouldn’t be hard. All we have to do is
eliminatereform Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security while keeping the taxes that pay for them the same. With the money we save by going to the Soylent Green plan, we can afford to rebuild out infrastructure, give big corporate subsidies, and still eliminate corporate and capital gains taxes.gene108
Fuck ’em. Cut off their government funding. I want these asshats to understand why their ancestors fought for Big Government.
I got mine.
I say fuck ’em, let them suffer and learn.
kth
The reporter is partly to blame, framing the dilemma as, do you want to keep your benefits, or do you want to keep your tax rates low. But neither Obama nor the Democrats have proposed raising taxes on families living off $40,000/yr. The only people who think that’s a good idea are the ones who refer to people in Mr. Gulbranson’s shoes as “lucky duckies”.
Villago Delenda Est
@gene108:
Alas, we’re dealing with people who have to be taught, remedially, in order to learn.
It has to be explained to them in detail, and it needs to be repeated, numerous times, for the lesson to sink in and be actually learned.
Also, it’s in the interest of a certain group in this society that these people are reduced as close to permanent desperation as possible. If they get past the first few levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, they’ll be freed up to start questioning their “betters”. We can’t have that, as we’ve seen with the OWS movement where people actually educated and trained to join the elite are discovering that there is no room for them in the elite…too much wastrel spawn (see Luke Russert, for example) occupying spots in it on the basis of which womb they fell out of, not any actual earned merit.
The Ancient Randonneur
This guy has to be a super secret plant working for Obama.
Chris
@PeakVT:
The brain is a rationalizing machine.
1) “Look, I’m just a guy who’s fallen on hard times and needs a little boost to get back on my feet… it’s not like I’m one of THESE people who’s got a DEPENDENCY on welfare because they’re too LAZY to work! I EARNED this!”
2) “Well, look, all the illegal immigrants and black racists and Islamo Fascists and Union Thugs are just drowning in welfare, so why shouldn’t I get some too? They did it first!”
3) “Well, of course, in a perfect world, I wouldn’t NEED welfare, because the Invisible Hand would make everything all right, but Democrats have messed with society and that completely threw everything off-balance so now I NEED that welfare money just to stay afloat and afford shit.”
4) Then, of course, you’ve got the “get my government off of my Medicare” crowd, the people who literally don’t realize that Social Security, Medicare and all the rest are government-run programs.
5) [among government employees and contractors] “Well yeah, the government’s too big and screwed up, but THIS job is IMPORTANT, it’s just all those OTHER bureaucracies that need to be abolished. But me? Dude, the country would collapse without me and my organization!”
I’d also add that the federal government has been doing so many things for so long to help the people that a fuckton of people just take it for granted and don’t even realize the extent to which their lifestyle is subsidized by the feds. It’s the flip side of the cliched upper-middle-class Che-Guevara-shirt wearing “radical” who totally thinks communism would be awesome (maaaann) but doesn’t realize the extent to which his lifestyle is market based and, if you actually took away all his capitalism, would probably scream like a banshee.
kay
I wish they had taken this one step further.
Who else is relying on the earned income tax credit money?
Every single large and small businees that caters to ordinary consumers, that’s who.
Every single person who receives that subsidy spends it, and they spend UT where they live.
All the small business people here know it. It’s the one time of year working class people can make big purchases, or pay for services they need but can’t pay for w/out their “tax check”.
We’re ALL benefitting from this, everyone from the used car lot to the dentist.
Linda Featheringill
It is my admittedly unscientific observation that right-wing types always cheat on their income tax. Always.
The exception to this would be my own family. If they cheated, they didn’t tell me. So I don’t know. On the other hand, even the protofascist members of my clan didn’t complain about paying taxes. In fact, it was a piece of the family wisdom that if you’re going to cheat someone, don’t cheat powerful entities. And the IRS was assumed to be very powerful. [It is.]
But yeah, I suspect that this guy has some unreported income somewhere.
gene108
@Villago Delenda Est:
It’s beyond that.
The fact this article appeared in the liberal New York Times already discredits validity for them.
As Rush would put it, this is part of the “drive by media’s” attempt to discredit the Tea Party and the great conservative cause started by Harry Goldwater and reaching perfection in the person of Ronald Reagan.
Cut them off. Let them suffer. Then they will realize why their ancestors went all New Deal Democrat and put FDR and his ilk in power and cheered for things like Social Security and the WPA and the CCC.
EDIT: That article really pissed me off. I know people, who are disabled and on the edge of living in the street, without government programs like Social Security and 8(a) housing and because these asshats voted Republicans in at the state level as well, whatever state programs exist for people who need them are being slashed.
Yet they get to keep sucking off the government teat.
gene108
@gene108: Should be Barry Goldwater
scav
Ki Gulbranson with his logo apparel shop will be ever so pleased when his bathtub soaked government ceases to enforce trademark and logo protection.
jrg
The longer I live, the more I realize how right H.L. Mencken was.
Some people are so fucking dumb, it doesn’t matter how many times you tell them “don’t shit where you eat”. Even after they get dysentery, there’s still an 80% chance they’ll blame evil spirits, or you for warning them in the first place.
Fuck people like this guy. Give this moron what he says he wants, and give it to him hard.
kay
Everyone has an interest in this and it isn’t just the Tea Partiers who are deluding themselves.
What would that community look like without the federal subsidies?
People can’t spend money if they don’t have it.
It’s a sort of mass delusion, and it’s inexcusable for small business people in communities like mine because we ALL know it, because we all get swamped when the tax subsidies arrive.
They put off purchases until they have that chunk of money, then they buy a used car, or a washer, or they get their teeth fixed.
It’s like a dirty little secret in rural communities, the influx of federal funds that the proud self-sufficient small business people are happily accepting.
I love how everyone focuses on the recipient side of the ledger and we’re all pretending they don’t SPEND it somewhere.
It goes right into local cash registers, all of it.
Bruuuuce
This cartoon was going around my FB friends list a few days ago. Says it in a way that even a Tea Partier (and certainly a child) can understand.
Schlemizel
@gene108:
While I completely agree with the sentiment there are 2 really big problems with the ‘kill them all let God sort them out’ method.
The collateral damage. Not just those who didn’t ask for it but got cut off anyway but all the violence and crime that will sprout out of the policy.
Getting it back. You think there was violence and destruction in the rise of unions & ultimately the New Deal a hundred years ago? Childs play compared to having to do it in this environment with electronic surveillance, constant monitoring and tracking and easy identification. Saul Allinsky would have nowhere to hide and no friends given the cost of being his friend.
gex
@middlewest: This Minnesotan agrees 1000%. There’s a really interesting article out there (American Prospect maybe?) that details how the GOP took over the MN Republican part. No more Arne Carlson’s for you! Naturally, Texans were sent.
@debit: The sad part is they WANT to be angry, so they’ll grab onto whatever they can. I’m surprised he was actually swayed by your evidence.
windshouter
I don’t remember the source, but I saw a report on a family in Texas “on relief” and they wanted the government to cut benefits. Evidently, if the government destroyed the safety net, the Churches would step up and everything would be ok.
jrg
@Schlemizel:
Considering that the alternative is “wait until we go broke because ‘conservatives’ think the fucking Easter Bunny pays for Medicare, then let Gen X and the Millennials take it in the ass”, I don’t find this to be a compelling argument.
gex
@cathyx: The side business is selling rocks alright. Since he’s a farmer in a small town I’m guessing it’s meth.
scottinnj
I’ve one like Ki in my family and I think his logic is that he has paid taxes for a number of years so is entitled to the benefits but ‘others’ have never paid in and are getting something they never paid into. Yes these are basically brown people he is referring to. I think it was Robber Barron Jay Gould (the Bain Capital of his time) who said “I just need half the working class to fight the other half”. Plus ca change…
Also, too, what will be the reaction in the Conservative Media to a story in the librul NY Times that was bylined by one Binyamin Applebaum. I think you can see where that will go real fast.
gene108
@Schlemizel: The article really pissed me off. I ain’t being much rational.
At the Federal level the President and the Senate have kept the gravy train flowing to all.
At the state level, folks who are dependent on state aid are getting screwed because of all the Republican dominated state government slashing services.
I honestly wouldn’t be upset, if wealthy folks voted to cut funding to the poor, so they can keep more money and maybe eliminate capital gains taxes for their investment income. It makes sense for them.
These sort of people are just ignorant of where they stand and on whose tax money they stand on.
pseudonymous in nc
Federal poverty level for a 7-person family is $34,930. That actually assumes families will take the benefits and tax credits to which they’re entitled.
It’s a good piece by the NYT. It commits an act of journalism, and though it buries its conclusion somewhat — that Saint Ronaldus Magnus set in place the doublethink that allows conservatives who depend upon the safety net to see Those People Over Yonder as the ones spending all the money.
rikyrah
1. the stupid burns.
2. I call it the luxury of delusion.
Schlemizel
@jrg:
Thats too close to the Nader argument that if we just elect W everyone will instantly recognize what a huge mistake it was and insist on rational government. Didn’t work that way
Ron
I was reading this article just earlier today. I had to laugh at the guy getting the EITC, school lunches for his kids, etc. claiming to be independent and to not need the federal gov’t. And of course whenever anyone in that article was pressed about giving up benefits, they said they couldn’t afford to. So they don’t want to give up bennies but don’t want to ask anyone to pay more in taxes. They are truly in lala land.
jrg
@Schlemizel: Maybe, but a key difference is that I don’t care if Gulbranson takes his head out of his ass or not. I don’t want to pay for things like Medicare, SS, etc, if they’re not going to be around when I retire… And I certainly don’t want to enable people who think leprechauns pay for all this shit.
gex
@Schlemizel: Yeah, if we have to hit rock bottom before they’ll see reason, and W. wasn’t rock bottom, then I don’t want to see what it will take.
RedKitten
@windshouter:
I’ve heard that argument before from fundie righties, and it irks me to no end. They seriously think that the churches and private charities would take care of everything.
What they don’t understand is that churches and private charities have their pet causes, and individuals have their pet causes.
If we left everything up to private charities, we’d have the “cute and fluffy” causes, the ones with enough money to hire PR people, doing okay.
The not so cute causes? Things like homeless shelters for alcohol/drug-addicted men? Causes that are extremely worthy, but are struggling financially and can’t get media traction? They’d fail…and a lot of people would suffer as a result.
I’ve said it before: whether or not someone gets to eat that day should NOT be determined by way of a popularity contest. That is why the social safety net is an essential part of a civilized society.
gex
@Ron: These guys are basically being asked, would you pay $100 to receive $1000, and not only say no, but are outraged by the offer.
Soonergrunt
@RedKitten:
Remember that for the conservatives, this is a feature, not a bug. Those who don’t get help because their cause couldn’t compete in the marketplace, don’t deserve help.
RedKitten
@Soonergrunt: Gotta love the invisible hand of the free market, right? Who cares how many people suffer and die in the meantime?
Are there no workhouses?
Frankensteinbeck
I think we’re seeing rebranding in action, very much like after Bush failed so miserably. It’s gotten to the point where there’s no hiding the absolute failure of the Tea Party, its policies, and the politicians they’re pushing. Like Bush, this mess has become toxic. The media really does not want to give up their narrative that the Tea Party is a true patriotic grassroots average American movement, but it can’t be allowed to interfere with the Sacred Horse Race, so there MUST be a scapegoat to allow the GOP itself to remain a functioning brand.
There’s an extra note of desperation because the Reagan Revolution is dying in front of us. The safety net is being expanded, Wall Street and the insurance industries have been slapped with massive new regulations packages, and absolutely the worst of all, raising taxes on the rich is popular for the first time since Reagan. I am enjoying watching the lies Reagan built the modern GOP on die, but to large portions of the media they are the bedrock assumptions of reality, and whoever reveals them for the shams they are must be discredited.
jefft452
“…the Nader argument that if we just elect W everyone will instantly recognize what a huge mistake it was…”
I don’t want the Tea Party (aka the white welfare bum party) cut off to change their mind,
I want them cut off from the Big Gubment Teat because I want them to suffer
I don’t want them to suffer so that they will understand,
I want them to suffer because they are assholes
Sorry, Im not ready to make nice
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
Self government presupposes a citizenry that’s intelligent enough for self government… or at least intelligent enough to select skilled representives who will truly look out for their interests.
In my darker moments, I find myself siding with gene108: Fuck ’em.
trollhattan
Somebody should alert Matt Taibi that there might be a story here. Oh, wait….
Suffern ACE
So who is the bigger rube in the thread. This guy from Minnesota or Friedman? Or the Thousand or so well heeled idea guys who’ve been churning out ideas that will sell for the past 50 years? Why go after this guys eitc to feel good. Why not go after those 1000 high hairs? The idea guys are more than happy to throw you at him. If you are vengeful at this guy, they win all the more.
Sly
There are many persistent myths preventing the United States from becoming a proper country. The belief that there are deserving and undeserving poor, and that poverty should be the punishment for any number of moral failings, is perhaps the most insidious and wrongheaded.
Public insurance rests on the notion that bad things can happen to anyone and that no one, categorically, deserves to be poor. Poverty is not a punishment to be meted out by any person, institution, or system of incentives. Once you go down the road of drawing distinctions between those who deserve and who do not deserve to be poor, you open yourself up to rationalizing the worst kind of depravity. Even, sadly, self-inflicted depravity in cases like Mr. Gulbranson.
Sly
@Sly:
Friedman.
Mr Stagger Lee
@PeakVT: Not unusual I have a UPS driver who delivers to my business, the job is a Teamster Union job, yet he listens to Rush, and Glenn. Wants Washington to be a Right To Work state, and wants the GOP to win so they can destroy the public sector unions would be dissolved. Yet he thinks his little job and benefits will be protected by the Teamsters. I ought to report him to his Teamster brothers.
gene108
@jrg:
They know taxes aren’t paid by leprechauns.
Taxes are paid by wealthy job creators, who pay more taxes than anybody else, but can’t create jobs because of the onerous tax burden the Imperial Federal Government imposes on them and therefore need a tax cut to generate more jobs and more taxes.
gene108
@pseudonymous in nc:
I don’t think Reagan set it in motion. He just mastered selling it.
The Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s and the economic mess of the 1970’s helped make the ground fertile for Reagan’s sales pitch.
PeakVT
@Mr Stagger Lee: Maybe he thinks that employees still own enough of UPS to keep wages and bennies up. That might be true. For now.
schlmizel
@jefft452:
Which gets us back to having lots of innocent victims suffer to prove your point. I don’t want to play nice with the assholes either but I don’t want all to suffer because of a few
Chris
@ Sly @ 84
“There are many persistent myths preventing the United States from becoming a proper country.”
Yes there are, and the biggest one by far is American Exceptionalism.
As long as Americans continue to believe they live in a separate universe where the laws of nature don’t apply to them because MERICA!!! absurdities like the one you mentioned and many, many more will continue to flourish.
schlmizel
@Sly:
No, Tommy has money and peddling this BS will give him more. The rube gets screwed because he believes the BS.
PurpleGirl
@RedKitten: To make a further point about private charity — I was on the church council of a small Lutheran Church with maybe 200 families (450 people). One of my duties as a council member was to participate in the budgeting process. I knew what money we had, what bills we had and what members gave us. The congregation was about 75 years old at the time and owned the Church and a parking lot free and clear. It had a parsonage that was also the Church office. We managed to cover our costs and have a little to help members. However, there was NO way that congregation could have helped people or a family for an extended period of time. Replace unemployment benefits — no way. Cover a full medical bill for a catastrophic illness — not very much of it.
I support government programs because I know the limits of private giving on the very local level. I person or child could die by the time a medical bill could be covered.
PIGL
@schlmizel: How many innocent victims have suffered for decades to satisfy the smug invincible ignorance of the Vicious Prick Party? To hell with them, and to hell with their children. They would have no mercy on yours, and to the extent that they are not crushed, they will continue to win.
I too am not ready to make nice.
gex
@PIGL: They’d stop immediately if we would just put blacks, immigrants, women, and gays back in their proper place. When the government makes clear that it discriminates against those others, they can feel much better about the government handing out money.
brendancalling
@Derelict:
what’s so fucked up is how stupid these people are. “We don’t have enough to get by, but don’t you dare help me, because I know I can get by on less.”
The one with the disabled daughter is the worst. Doesn’t even give a shit about his own kid’s well-being.
PIGL
@gex: An alternate solution, in the immortal words of The Cowboy Junkies: Whites Off Earth Now!
I am with some of the extreme postings of Ms. Morgan on this one. I think the real problems are
1) universal suffrage such that mean people can vote;
2) unlimited capital accumulation.
as long as 1) is the case, people who want 2) will find a way to dupe the vicious pricks into electing governments that facilitate it.
if 2) is the case, it doesn’t really matter who votes. Both have to be fixed, or civilisation and liberty are, I believe, doomed.
Not one single serious person is willing to grapple with the flaw in the Universalist pretensions of The Enlightenment. They had it almost write: voting should not depend on race or age or sex or property ownership, or even economic class. That lecherous reactionary Heinlein actually was on the right track, except for his assay for the condition of not being an asshole.
There needs to be a somewhat reliable and precise test that will exclude Vicious Pricks from voting. It doesn’t matter that some will slip through, if they are exluded en bloc. It doesn’t matter if some non VPs are excluded, because the end result will be the better decison making that is the end goal in the first place.
This policy is neutral with respect to what political decisions eventually get made, except in the sense that the more reactionary and feudalistic and irrational choices available under any given situation will be excluded because their reflexive advocates will have been exluded from the process. This would be a good thing.
Ohio Mom
Read the article, watched a few of the videos, read the comments until my computer stalled. Was that depressing. Like reading Joe Bageant without the trenchant wit.
These people are not without heart but they are so uneducated, so naive and gullible, such rubes! They are pathetic but they are taking me (and my kid’s future) down with them, so I am torn between feeling compassion for them and absolute contempt.
PIGL
@schlmizel: I’m not advocating the suffering of innocents to merely prove a point. That would be as icky and immoral as you think. I am saying that the tradeoff is between a future when almost all innocents do suffer, and one where much fewer innocents suffer.
The present Republican Pary and their 30% enablers have to be smashed, or we are on a one-way ratchet down to the worst outcome. If the 30% enablers have to suffer in order to prevent that, well, the moral choice seems clear to me, and also emotionally satisfactory to vindictive swine such as I.
And yes, as a matter of fact, I am a Vanguardist.
In all seriousness, though, it would be better to defeat them politically, and the election may be the chance to do it. Those bastards whose heads to not explode may take it out on their children, but at least there will remain social services to apprehend their kids. The emotional suffering of the bastards concerns me not at all.
PIGL
@Ohio Mom: I would mostly agree with you, except….not all, or even most of them, actually have “heart”. I have become convinced that for most of them, it is not simply that they are ignorant and unintelligent and gullible. It is that they are also, at bottom, mean.
The inborne mean streak is the common thread that connects these rubes, and the upper middle-class republicans.
And yes, they are endangering our common future.
jefft452
@schlmizel: nits make lice
gex
@Linda Featheringill: You are probably not wrong. This seems apropos since we’re talking about MN and I’m in MN.
My father is a hard core Republican. He is a Chinese immigrant that went to state schools in the 60’s. From there he went directly into work at a defense contractor.
He also has some rental properties, but only claims 1/3 of the rental income while deducting 3/3 of all the expenses. When confronted by me about this, his defense was that the government would just waste it. To which I responded, “like spending money educating Chinese immigrants or over spending on weapons we’ll never use?”
My all time favorite though was when he retired (with a nice pension and benefits thanks to taxpayers) he went to the social security office to file some paperwork. He came home bitching about “all the foreigners taking his money” that he saw in the office.
Every hard core conservative I’ve ever known has this kind of cognitive dissonance. The only people I know who have been on public assistance are white Republicans. I really wish they would consider therapy to work out their issues instead of hatred and obsessive focusing on others.
gex
@PurpleGirl: And also, how exactly are churches supposed to help people? Catholic Charities gets 2/3 of their budget from the tax payers. If we cut taxes, the financial support for our faith based initiatives (which is where a lot of Christian charity is getting its funding) would go down too, directly diminishing the ability of churches to pick up the slack.
bemused
@Mr Stagger Lee:
We have a relative around 58 years old who has been a UPS driver for 30+ years and has been thinking about retiring in the last couple of years. He is a rightwinger and HATES unions. We often scratch our heads at how he became a republican so young when practically the whole family is liberal, from the first time he voted and are really flummoxed how this very nice guy turns into a red faced, angry, agitated Foxbot during conversations. It’s hard to figure what is a safe topic at times when Fox, etc has their audience all worked up over the silliest things. We do express our opinions and toss out a few facts at times but the family doesn’t get into heated debates. We all know he and his wife will scoff at anything that isn”t “Fair and Balanced”. I have wondered if they believe Obama wasn’t born in this country but I’m afraid to find out.
gex
It really is shameful how easily and invisibly many white people will respond to dogwhistle politics.
Suffern ACE
@gex: I’m not one for sanctimony, but…have you checked the guy’s countertops lately? It’s like he’s the white version of the inner city black guy who obviously must be getting by selling crack and pimping out his daughter and therefore it’s easy to slash any programs for the school he sends his kids to as it’s just throwing away good money after bad people.
gex
@Suffern ACE: Didn’t you get the memo? White cancels all that out.
Cain
What people don’t understand about these programs is that if we didn’t have them they will fall prey to organized crime. If you can’t borrow from the bank, then it is going to be payday lendors or some cheap ass gang that will loan it to you and then break your kneecaps if you don’t pay for it. Or perhaps they need you to do a favor.
Crime will rise if we don’t have these programs. That’s why crime right now is so low. We give people a way to live without being forced into servitude. People naively think that if we get rid of the gravy train that these people will just start working hard and blah blah American dream. No way, dude. You’re fucked without these programs.
jefft452
@schlmizel: “…suffer to prove your point.”
Im not trying to prove a point
I want these asshole to suffer because their suffering would make me happy
Not as happy as when we still lived in the country that FDR & LBJ built, but the assholes wont let us go back to that
So when they are toasting a sparrow on a curtain rod, I wont be happy if I have a sparrow too.
The only chance of happiness I have is to be there when their own loser kids beat them up and take their sparrow
Spite politics works both ways
PIGL
@jefft452:
I am with you, bro. Bugger being all superior and adult and forgiving. These people will never wise up until their asses get seriously burned. Maybe not even then, but as you said, there’d at least be a certain spiteful satisfaction accruing from the burnage…all the satisfaction we are every likely to get.
In other words “it’s mercy, compassion and forgiveness I lack”.
Ohio Mom
@PIGL: It’s true that the tea-baggers I know personally *are* mean and bigots to the nth degree. They’re all as comfortable as middle-class people can be these days; natrually, the most rabid ones I know are a family whose main breadwinner is a municipal worker. When you try (I used to) to explain say, that no, social security isn’t a Ponzi scheme, you can see them following along until it gets to be too close to requiring them to admit a new idea into their brain. Then, something changes in their faces and you can see their ignorance is freely chosen and carefully maintained.
But when I watched the videos of the people in this small town, especially the one of Ki Gulbrason, they’re all totally flummoxed. They don’t want anyone taken off dialysis, everyone they know who gets help really needs it and they don’t want them to suffer — though they can reluctantly imagine that happening.
They have no larger context to put anything in. They hear that the government is broke and everyone they know is broke, too. The idea that there’s a small class of uber-wealthy who are playing us all is completely beyond their ken. They’re marks who don’t have so little brainpower that they’ll never have even an inkling they’ve been had. That’s what made them pathetic to me.
Chris
@Ohio Mom:
This. My friends and I noticed the same thing with a conservative friend of ours. The thing was that you could get her to agree with all kinds of liberal ideas if you actually explained what they were and how they worked. But the minute she found out that they were, in fact, liberal ideas, her brain would hit RESET and she’d just start babbling whatever generic lines she’d heard from Fox News last.
The kicker being when she said something like “I agree we need a stimulus, just not THAT kind of stimulus.” “Okay. What would you do?” She proceeds to describe almost exactly the stimulus Obama in fact gave us. Long silence. “That… IS, EXACTLY ‘that kind’ of stimulus.” Silence. And of course she still thinks the Obama stimulus ruined the country.
Fifty years of reflexive DFH-punching takes its toll. There’s more than a few people out there who’d be a lot more liberal if they actually allowed themselves to think, but have such a reflexive “OH JEEZ LIBERAL COOTIES EJECT EJECT EJECT!” reaction whenever they realize what they’re doing that it’s basically a lost cause.
PIGL
@Ohio Mom: perhaps there are two main groups, the jerks we agree about, and the helpless lost pathetic ones, who could be brought to reason. I don’t have a response to that at the momemt…and yet, do they listen to anything but Fox, and talk AM radio? I have to wonder…there is alternate information out there, and not that far away.
Jason
Even better, he drives on the government constructed roads, presumably sends his kids to a public school, will draw on social security and PDB and medicaid, and given his politics is a firm supporter of that massive government spending program called “The War on Terror” which is supposedly preserving his freedom to punch hippies.
But of course these things are not defined as the “Safety Net”. The “Safety Net” is defined narrowly as those government programs that benefit negroes.