I recently received yet another of those scurrilous e-mails
attempting to link the President to anything bad the sender can think of.
The e-mail read as follows: "Just multiply Lucy by 90+ million, and you can readily see why this Country is broke! Pardon me while I throw up,
Want your blood to curdle as we start 2014? Listen to the link.
This proves the point of so many emails that once on welfare, recipients do not want to work again !!
You HAVE to listen to this.... "
And then there is a link to a conversation between a talk
radio host and a caller in Texas in which she called working people stupid
because she is on welfare and will get a check regardless, so why work? She is
probably a truly loathsome person and a leech, or simply angry at the
conservative callers who belittle all welfare recipients, who knows?
I waited to respond
to this, but the more I thought about it, the more I felt the need to. The
host asked if, and she said, yes, she was, speaking on an
"Obamaphone" . How long will this lie endure? The law that made low
cost cell phones available to the poor is not, was not, never will be an Obama
program, It was signed into law in 1996, and implemented under Bush 43, yet the
lies continue. This is what is so troublesome to me regarding this sort of
fraudulent chain e-mail. Otherwise intelligent, informed persons for some
reason loose all of that mental capacity when the subject of this President
comes up, and they are willing to further and pay lip service to any
scurrilous, ludicrous, defamatory and, in many cases, racist tripe. Only they
can look inside their souls and figure out why that is. It is beyond me. As to
the largest part of this e-mail, the implication, stated as fact, is that all Americans on welfare are like this
one pathetic leech in Texas. Where is the Right Wing outrage at the smearing of
90 million by associating them with one malfeasant shithead? No one's offended
by this obvious slander? OK, then, if all welfare recipients can be
characterized as being like this one person, then, applying the same standard
of fairness, all politically active
Republicans are like John Wayne Gacy - mentally disturbed, murdering child
molesters. Fair comparison? Gacy was one known person. The caller to that radio
show was one known person. Seen in the light of my ridiculous example, the
willingness to accept and forward an e-mail such as this nauseates me.
So enough for journalistic integrity, lacking in this e-mail example as it is in
Faux News. Let's deal with the 90 million number. The e-mail certainly implies
and would have one believe that there are 90 million Americans on welfare. In truth, there are about 12 million on
welfare, of whom 75% are children. This leaves about 3.7 million adults. Ergo the originator lied by a factor of eight
in the first place. So where does the 90 million come from? Any person with
rudimentary computer skills can look things like this up and discover truth
rather than read this shitty little e-mail, get mad and forward it. The 90
million probably comes from adding up any and all Americans getting any form
whatsoever of government assistance. This includes food stamps, rent subsidies,
and Medicaid, which includes a too large number (can you say minimum wage
earner) of two working parent households in America. Sad but true. In fact, at one point, while I was active duty USN, we could have qualified for food stamps!
In point of fact, about 72 million Americans received Medicaid
assistance last year. I am absolutely certain the original writer of the e-mail
never even considered putting these facts together: If every American had
health care, even if some only contributed one third its cost, Medicaid would
save a huge amount of money as its rolls declined. It seems to me that the
current President and Congress passed some legislation attempting to do just
that. Of course the same Tea Baggers idolized by the original writer oppose
such things. I guess they’d rather pay all the cost of medical care for the
poor rather than just some of it. And, by the way, these are the same jerks who
oppose some things in the new Common Core educational framework, mostly those
related to teaching critical thinking skills. It makes sense, because if you can actually
think critically, analyze, extrapolate and draw logically valid conclusions,
and you are a Tea Bagger, you must shoot yourself because you are a living
contradiction.
Politifact, a conservative, (yet
reliable, go figure) fact checker found for last quarter of 2013 about 3.7
million welfare recipients, I repeat, not 90 million, 3.7 million, which makes
the number cited in the e-mail actually an exaggeration by a factor of 2,400%!
In summary, I loathe the kind of attitude displayed by the
young woman who called the radio station, but make no mistake, there are
numerous Americans of all colors and political persuasions drawing some sort of
“freebie” from either the government, some insurance settlement or an employer’s
workman’s comp. plan who are equally freeloading with no intent to go back to
work either. Meanwhile some younger vets with real, service related
disabilities have to bang down the VA’s doors for help. Finally, Medicare and
mandatory medical assistance required by hospitals (signed into law by President
Reagan in 1987) aren’t welfare, and would be significantly reduced by full and
cooperative implementation of the Affordable Care Act. So if you are a
conservative with a brain, you should be wildly enthusiastic regarding the ACA.
Suck on that, Senator Cruz; oh, but wait, as a Canadian born, you have free medical care anyway. don't you?
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