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Sometimes I don’t understand conservatives with their “small government” approach to “government largesse” and big government approach to reproductive rights.
Talking Points Memo (TPM) has an article up on what Gary Bauer, the former president of the Family Research Council, said at the Values Voter Summit said about people like me. And no, not about trans people like me, but about people who are receiving what are often referred to as entitlements.
The TPM article, entitled Gary Bauer: Obama’s Votes Come From Welfare Checks And Voter Fraud, had this to say about those receiving checks from the government:
After his speech, Bauer told TPM “voter fraud is rampant in urban areas” and he expected that to help Obama.
Bauer also told TPM that “there are a lot of people who will vote this November because they depend on government largesse,” meaning checks from Washington. He expects those voters to go Obama as well.
“They will vote for their own perceived interests, which is they don’t want anybody cutting back the size of the checks,” Bauer said.
…“There’s a lot of people out now around America who depend on checks from their fellow taxpayers being in the mailbox every day,” Bauer said. “They will turn out in massive numbers, but so will the entrepreneurs, the small businessmen and women, the military families, the soldiers in harms way, the millions of Americans that want to hope again.”
I’m a retired military veteran receiving a pension. I’m a disabled military veteran with a 100% VA disability rating, service connected. I’m just plain disabled and unable to hold down a job. For all of these statuses, I “depend on checks from their fellow taxpayers”; I apparently am one of those many “people who will vote this November because they depend on government largesse” — meaning checks from Washington.
I’m going to vote for a second term for President Obama, but a May Gallup Poll on how veterans will vote breaks it down this way:
U.S. veterans, about 13% of the adult population and consisting mostly of older men, support Mitt Romney over Barack Obama for president by 58% to 34%, while nonveterans give Obama a four-percentage-point edge.
It seems that Bauer has at least one group, many of which receive “government largesse,” a little bit wrong on who they vote for.
But interestingly to me, it seems to me that Bauer doesn’t consider people who receive checks from the government — which would seem to me to include disabled veteran and non-veteran Americans, military retirees, as well as older Americans receiving Social Security benefits — full citizens of the United States. It appears to me that he implied that our votes should be diminished and discounted.
As the Marines are fond of saying, “Hoo-rah!” That’s so the way to indirectly degrade all American citizens who receive government checks.
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When I worked for HJF at Wilford hall, we had a guy who was a fire spitting conservative who would eventually graduate into full teabaggery. He was constantly going on about “government program” this and “taxpayer supported” that. I once pointed out that he had spent the past twenty years of his adult life in the Air Force and was now working at an Air Force hospital in the civil service. He didn’t get the irony…
It’s about control.
By withholding someone’s needs, be it food, or medical care, or shelter, or a paycheck, or earned benefits (aka “entitlements”), you gain a mechanism of control. They want that control.
That’s why they want “welfare to work”, they don’t want anyone to get aid without a leash being attached.
That’s why they don’t want full employment policies, they want to force people to work for bare survival wages.
They don’t however, want to be controlled, by having to pay taxes or obey health, building, or environmental regulations.
They see freedom as a zero sum game, and they want it all for themselves.
Excellent analysis! It IS all about control, just as the U.S. evil Empire MUST control other countries, especially when they are sitting on (or near) valuable natural resources that only God’s gift to humanity, the U.S., should have.
Well, of course not. When they do it, it’s OK. Hell, those that bother to justify it call it “bleeding the beast” and claim it’s part of their deliberate plan to weaken the government so it collapses.
Gary Bauer? What the hell is he doing venturing out into public life again? I thought that the whispering campaign being done against him by his fellow Republicans would have deep-sixed his efforts to work the Bible Grift.
I am a Canadian who pays a higher tax rate than the US. For that higher rate I get better medical coverage, better unemployment support, etc. The big plus to me is that people in need get better help to keep them fed and housed. No, I am not religious, I just don’t like to see people suffer. Yes, there are a few who scam the system, but I don’t mind as long as those who need help, get it.
Yeah that’s it. Even Ayn Rand took SS they tell me. If we take enough, they’ll go broke (I think).
Show off.
Damn straight. How we gonna power them veeheicls.
May I recommend a candidate who might dare not to do what Mitt Romney is promising us? Her name is Jill Stein.
http://www.jillstein.org/
Tell him he needs another interest, like pornography or something. anything before he goes blind with that shit.
Hi Autumn, nicely framed.
Bauer seems to not understand how business works. “… the entrepreneurs, the small businessmen and women,” understand v ery well that their customers pay in dollars from their pensions, SS, welfare, WIC and disability checks. If ‘the military families, the soldiers in harms way,’ can’t figure out where *their* paychecks are coming from, well, boy howdy. And as for ‘the millions of Americans that want to hope again’, I suppose he means the kidney transplant patients who hope that Medicare will be extended to them beyond the current two (three?) year limit, or to the cancer patients who have been denied insurance due to ‘pre-existing conditions’ or to the long-time unemployed who have no job market and the students who graduate to no jobs, and the foreclosed-upon who would most like to have their homes back…
Well, yeah, those guys? He thinks they will vote — how?
Since when do conservatives have a ““small government” approach to “government largesse””? LOL. Not for over 30 years, if ever. It’s just Orwellian doublespeak.
We are all dependent on government checks
There is no industry in America that would exist without that government check.
The best investment an American company can make is to have a lobbyist in DC to increase the size of government check they receive.
The finance industry requires a government bailout every 20 months – S&L fraud, Mexican Peso fraud, SE Asian fraud, Long Term Capital Management fraud, housing bubble fraud & constant life support since 2008. Manhattan would look like Detroit, but for the saving grace of that government check.
Business Week determined in 1992 that commercial air travel would not exist without government subsidy – United Airlines & Boeing, yes, welfare recipients. Don’t forget the 911 airline bailout and the twice-a-decade engineered airline bankruptcy.
Automobiles? At least the American industry would not exist without the 2008 government bailout. The community (yes communism) has always built the roads and given away the petroleum reserves that fuel that industry.
Farming? Government subsidies galore. Computers & internet? The government invented and developed them.
Whenever an American industry complains at the WTO that Europe is directly subsidizing an industry, Europe responds by saying that the US defense budget is a subsidy to American industries – which it is. Like the $4 trillion spent in Afghanistan & Iraq have contributed any productive capacity – nope, just profit for companies that would not otherwise exist.
Remove the government checks from Gary Bauer’s state of Virginia, Federal spending in the DC area, military spending in the Norfolk area and state spending in Richmond and all that is remaining is picking peanuts and betting on dog fights at Michael Vick’s house.
In fact, the five phone books Mr. Bauer needs to stand on to reach that microphone wouldn’t be there without a government check in telecommunications and forestry.
So let’s make sure we get all this right….
Actual living, breathing, human beings (i.e. citizens) voting their economic interests is bad. It is the embodiment of the oligarchs’ fevered fears that “A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.” Of course, when the oligarchy discovers that they can just use their money (much of which is obtained via government contracts, favorable tax policies, and federal reserve handouts) to just buy the entire political and media establishment, well, that is just free market and First Amendment goodness.
Folks, it is long past due that there be a serious market shortage in lightpoles and rope. They are not going to give up power until there is.
Gary Bauer is a liar who specializes in demonizing everyone who’s not just like his audience of the moment. He doesn’t care about veterans or the poor or the disabled, which I guess makes him a perfect ally for the Romney-Ryan campaign. Maybe Mitt will make him secretary of Health and Human Services.
You make a good point. A lot of conservatives don’t understand your small-government approach to protecting the lives of unborn babies and your large-government approach to everything else.
The right to privacy has been a thorny Constitutional issue for a long time, and it would do us all good to think more about what parts of our lives we think it should apply to, and why.
You all are missing it.
“Entitlements” is a dog-whistle for “Welfare,” which, in turn is a dog-whistle for “black people.” You know, like the “legitimate poor,” like “legitimate rape,” which means “I am God and I determine who is worthy,” which distills down to “I got mine; eff-you.”
“Keep your filthy government hand off my Medicare!”
Plus the airlines don’t furnish airports, air traffic control or security. And they still can’t make it without government welfare.