My God. Why this reign of terror*? Yes, that's what it is! Why do you want me to die, Republicans? Why do you want children and old people like me to wither away without food? You want us to not have food or health care! You want poor kids to not be able to take advantage of school. What do you think you are doing to us -- 1 in 7 Americans living in poverty -- but killing us slowly? Yes, we know it will lead to deaths, especially with the decline by GOP governors to take expansion of Medicaid!
Their reign of terror* is waged in full knowledge of it's impact, the deaths that will occur.
I'm a 70 year old woman with many health problems, living on Social Security at below the poverty level. I've lived a useful life, running my own business, teaching, raising a child, working in various jobs, here I am in my last decade reduced to poverty. I planned it otherwise but this is how it turned out despite hard work, a degree and determination. (Several operations over 5 years and no one would hire. No one. Could not stand so many jobs were not possible. I loved working, being useful, part of a team, like at the newspaper where I worked after my husband left for greener pastures. Due to ill health lost the business I started, employing other people, and lost my house. Became poor for first time in my life in my late 50's.) It can happen to almost anyone.
But really. REALLY, Republicans! It is hard to take it in, but it is the truth, you all hate us poor so much that you are happy to take the food out of the mouths babes, from many millions. Cutting Food Stamps for the working poor, those who can't find jobs, those who can't work -- like kids and the elderly... those who need that help! Cutting Social Security is another goal! My God, it is MONSTROUS.
My food stamps were already cut by 1/3 last year, btw! And not due to any changes in my circumstances! Thanks a lot, Republicans.
But Oh, God, what about the children who need this program they cut today?
The food stamp cuts scheduled to go into effect on Nov. 1 will reduce spending by $5 billion in the 2014 fiscal year, and another $6 billion over the 2015 and 2016 fiscal years.
Forget about old people like me, what about the CHILDREN? I believe the Republicans know exactly what they are doing -- because one of you terrorists* told me this TO MY FACE earlier this year.
That and more below.......
We know that Republicans have a big deficit in the empathy department. But is that all it is? NO. We Progressives, we Democrats have taken a long journey to the point of finally realizing the awful monstrous truth. That their downright meanness, their downright hatred of the poor, of citizens who have the temerity to be unlucky in health or genes or background, that they need help.
Who does this? Who wants people to die of illness not treated and to not be able to have enough to eat? Who want people to DIE? Monsters, that's who.
They say they believe someone needs help just "while they get on their feet. To "tide them over a rough patch." Ha. They lie all the time. We're so used to that, but these statements seek to salve their own conscience I suppose, as if they had one.
How could they not know that people sometimes cannot ever ever get back "on their feet" and that "rough patch" stretches painfully to the end of their days?
How can people such as Mitt Romney not know? They know. Their reign of terror is waged in full knowledge of it's impact, the deaths that will occur. The leaders of this reign of terror are not ignorant.They just don't care and they want what they want and this is why it is monstrous!
Hurting children and elderly people in need does not bother them. Unfortunately, this is in part because they mistakenly believe only African Americans are poor, or white people who are degenerates. The great UNWORTHY.
They have no hearts. They want to wall themselves off more and more from those who need help. That's what monsters need to do.
THIS IS THEIR MONSTROUS IDEOLOGY.
YET, yet, they approve payouts of billions to subsidies for farmers and oil companies! It's about the PLUTOCRACY and BIG CORPORATIONS, the 1%, getting THEIR payments, their ability to get away with paying no taxes. Because the whole thing is not rational since we know that each dollar spent on SNAP comes back to the economy in the amount of $1.74. Economically this is a winning program, a win-win to any rational person. But they are monsters, not rational thinkers.
Like the professor who told me to my face that he was "Draconian," Romney, Ryan and Cruz and Joe whoever, they are racists and/or look down on people who have not been lucky. So I asked this professor:
What about all the old people who will die if you cut their Social Security --like you just said you wanted to do?
His answer?
I'm Draconian.
Yes, looking right at me he said this. I knew exactly what he meant: (that if people like you die, so what? That's the price of the kind of country I want and who cares if we lose a lot of dead weight, lazy folks.) So I know what I am talking about. This person, I warn you, seems as normal as another other person you might meet, a young professional person, married, two little children, nice demeanor, usually very pleasant.
They view us with contempt. In their minds they spit on us. Metaphorically, probably. Damn us all to hell.
As Paul Krugman says today, this is how they think:
So what’s this all about? One reason, the sociologist Daniel Little suggested in a recent essay, is market ideology: If the market is always right, then people who end up poor must deserve to be poor.
REPUBLICANS.......
YOU pretend that people who get food stamps do not WANT to work.
YOU pretend that there are jobs for all who want them.
YOU pretend that working people will earn enough to live on.
Furthermore YOU pretend you are Christians!
Really, they call themselves Christians -- and detest the poor?
They make up these:
Phony excuses for their reign of terror:
-- the poor are lazy and shiftless
-- we don't want to get them used to handouts
-- giving people what they need makes them dependent
-- all help needs to be temporary
-- we're helping them by making sure they do not have food to eat
-- they need to be responsible for themselves and get a job
It is their plan to cut all "entitlements" including Social Security. We know this. They are talking about this.
They want to fill all the graveyards of America with all the poor people.
Sorry to be so graphic, but this is what it amounts to.
What I want to ask is this:
What kind of f**#ing ideology is this?
Is it your aim to outdo the worst of the worst in history?
You complain about "Marxism" and "socialism" but really!
You want to kill off the sick, the elderly, the children?
Do you know what that makes you?
Monsters.
Because it is not hypothetical. It is real.
It is real people who will suffer and die.
Your neighbors, your "fellow Americans." Those people you think do not deserve to live. Square that with your precious "right to life."
Krugman calls it a war on the poor, "All of this hostility to the poor..." that has reached "a fever pitch." I call it the Republican reign of terror:
In a much-cited recent memo, Democracy Corps, a Democratic-leaning public opinion research organization, reported on the results of focus groups held with members of various Republican factions. They found the Republican base “very conscious of being white in a country that is increasingly minority” — and seeing the social safety net both as something that helps Those People, not people like themselves, and binds the rising nonwhite population to the Democratic Party. And, yes, the Medicaid expansion many states are rejecting would disproportionately have helped poor blacks.
So there is indeed a war on the poor, coinciding with and deepening the pain from a troubled economy. And that war is now the central, defining issue of American politics.
-- my bold
*Terror can be spread with words alone. It does not have to be with a bomb. If you think "terrorists" is too strong a word, let me just say they cause me to live in terror of not being able to get my basic needs met. I can barely live on what I have now. The 1/3 less in food stamps made me realize this as every month gets harder and harder. So, no, it
is terror, and if I had children I could not feed that would be much worse terror. I feel very bad for poor families today. Don't you?