This is amazing: Animator takes MRAs to task.

Scott Benson destroys MRAs. It is amazing. Watch it. Love it.



And because people can't have nice things, and his commentors are lame, he answered them.

Congressional Republicans care about violence against women now, and they think we're all stupid.

RH Reality Check has an excellent post by Robin Marty on Congressional Republicans dash to show how concerned they are about violence against women. Which is obvious by their multiple attempts to prevent the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). I don’t know about you, but I totally believe them now.

A handful of Republican Congressmen and one Congresswoman are still convinced that the media is doing some sort of blackout on Gosnell and they took to the floor to give one-minute speeches on the trial. They used this time to also discuss the horrors of abortion and the need to “speak for the unborn” and protect women from harm. Bachman said this, “Thank God for the men who stood up today to speak for women and against violence against women.”

Take a minute and try to unpack that. Thanks menfolk, I don’t know what women would do without you. Who, who I ask would protect us from violence against women? Additionally, who would commit violence against women? Personally, I love the infantilization of women. I mean who wants all that responsibility of making health decisions for one’s self? Not I.

So the battle cry went out on the right after they realized the Gosnell trial was about to start. Time to mobilize and attack women. The most ridiculous aspect of all of this is the complete lack of “women’s news” by the right. Gosnell is old news to the ladies of the left. Sure the trial is a big deal, but this idea that there was some kind of blackout is just a demonstration of the right’s ignorance.

Rep Marlin Stutzman (R-Indiana) announced he and fellow Representatives were going to make the floor speeches in hopes of garnering new coverage for the Gosnell trial. Stutzman is a two-term Congressman who has been quoted saying, “one day, we will reverse Roe v. Wade and reform a culture that has cheapened human life.”

This isn’t Stutzman’s first time; he and several other Republican Congress members spoke about Gosnell back on April 11. Gosnell’s clinic was compared to “Auschwitz’s ovens” and “Cambodia’s killing fields.” After Stutzman said, “We ought to take a look at our culture’s careless disregard for this story in particular, and for innocent life in general…Has our national conscience been irreversible seared by the deaths of over 1.2 million unborn children every year in this country? Mr. Speaker, I am confident that one day the era of abortion on demand will close and we will restore a lasting respect for life.”

Idiot. How about we start with the mass murder of black men in prison? Or by the police? Or war? Nope, we need to start with the unborn. Additionally, this is not the same as an attempt to exterminate an entire group of people. Idiot. However, they travel in packs. Stutzman was joined by several Congressman; New Jersey Republican Chris Smith and Pennsylvania Rep Scott Perry made speeches with Stutzman in the past. Some of the newbies were excited to use Gosnell’s trial to explain efforts to defund the Planned Parenthood or pass a 20 week abortion ban.

At least they knew that what Gosnell was doing was criminal, but I think they are confused on which part. You see Gosnell wasn’t supposed to be doing abortions nor third trimester abortions nor committing murder. But performing abortions when licensed isn’t a crime. The speeches began in the realm of normalcy, Gosnell is bad, murder bad, but then morphed into a tirade against abortion and how we have to defend women.

Bachman said, “The mainstream media has all but gone silent, and failed to cover this horrific violence against women. No one, Democrat or Republican, believes in violence against women. We abhor it. But there’s nothing that has come close to what has happened in this abortion clinic in Pennsylvania…and it appears that it has been ignored across the nation. Well we won’t. And I think God for the men who have stood up here today to stand for women, and against violence and against violence against women.”

As Marty points out, only two (Indiana Rep. Tood Roika and Florida Rep. Ilene Ros-Lehtinen) of the 18 members who spoke out on the floor voted in favor of the VAWA re-authorization. So in case there was any doubt, they are not on the side of women, they are pushing a conservative anti-women, anti-choice agenda. This is dangerous and well, really offensive because they think we’re all so stupid by claiming violence against women we’ll fall for it.

Sorry poor people sequester is still in effect for you, but Congress will not stand for flight delays.

Full disclosure, I’m the person who gets dropped off at the airport two hours before a flight. I’m paranoid like that. I’m convinced I’m always going to miss my flight. Alex Pareene did a piece on Congress’s rush to making flying easier because of flight delays.

So we know the sequester is having a horrifying impact on the poor, but Congress doesn’t care except when it fucks with their travel plans. The FAA furloughs have resulted in lengthy flight delays. Now, Congress is all about helping the “regular Americans” not to be confused with the poor ones or those whose jobs are being furloughed. The Senate rushed to action last night to vote to let the FAA transfer some month from the Transportation Department to pay air traffic controllers. This of course is for the good of the people, and those people would be members of Congress flying home to their locals this weekend. Victory (for the wealthy).

As Pareene reminds us, the Senate can’t confirm a judge without months of delay and constitutional crisis, but this bill passed in minutes with unanimous consent. So if the House can get it through today all members of Congress can fly without interference.

Of course, Congress (at large), but the House specifically will do nothing to come to a boarder deal on the across-the-board cuts. House GOP claims the White House is lying about the impact of the sequester except of course the flight delays. After all, who cares about the poor especially the homeless or children, it isn’t like they vote.

Earlier this month Huffington Post pulled together some actual issues because of the sequester which can be found here. They range from travel delays and inconveniences to jobs lost and food pantries closed. I do hope everyone in Congress enjoys their flights home though to their districts where the sequester might be having disastrous consequences.

West Virginia Delegate thinks kids should work for meals, well they do have tiny hands so better quality, right?

Tyler Kingkade wrote a brief piece for the Huffington Post, and yeah, I don’t like them either, but brevity is key. Kingkade wrote about West Virginia Republicans who proposed making kids work for food in schools. Take a minute.

Delegate Ray Canterbury (R-Greenbrier) has floated the idea in West Virginia’s House of Delegates of having school children work as janitors during a floor debate. The West Virginia House passed a school lunch bill (89-9), which is amazing. This bill is going to Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin who is expected to sign it. The Feed to Achieve Act establishes nonprofits to solicit private donations to go toward providing every child breakfast at no cost. However, there are a lot of poor people in West Virginia so I can’t imagine funding through donation is going to feed every child, but hey, step in the right direction (pun!).

Naturally, a republican thought this was going too far. Those kids being lazy and needing food. Del. Canterbury said, “I think it would be a good idea if perhaps we had the kids work for their lunches: trash to be taken out hallways to be swept, lawns to be mowed, make them earn it. If they miss a lunch or they miss a meal they might not, in that class that afternoon, learn to add, they might not learn to diagram a sentence, but they’ll learn a more important lesson.”

Kids, they’ve had it too easy for too long. So, silly me, a few questions. How do the paid janitors feel about this proposal? How many hours or “labor actions” will an individual child be forced to work? The cost of the meal? What is the pay rate for each “labor action”? If the child does too many or works too many hours will he/she be compensated with money? What if the child has a balance of "labor actions"?

Canterbury’s argument is rooted in the poor people are lazy myth. Feed children and they won’t have a work ethic. I’d argue that importance lesson is ostracize your poor peers. After all they are destined to be burdens on the system, which will be ensured if they don’t I don’t know learn to add. Fuck you buddy. Fuck you. But don’t worry, Canterbury will create an impoverished serving class. Bastard. Also, though is shouldn't need to be said: THE POOR GENERALLY WORKER HARDER THAN EVERYONE ELSE. For real, often multiple low-wage, physically demanding jobs. But anyone who wants to try me on this is welcome to a punch in the face.

Not everyone is sold, Del. Meshea (D-Kanawha) was pretty offended, saying, “I'm offended anybody in this body would dare say a child has to work for their meals. I can’t believe someone would say a first-grader, a second-grader…a fifth grader has to labor before they eat. This isn’t an entitlement bill.”

In 2004, a report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation found children were twice as likely to live in neighborhood with high poverty rates compared to the national average. This group also ranks West Virginia as 47^th nationally for education with 79% of eighth graders not proficient in math and 73% of fourth graders not proficient in reading. So you know, you can only go up. Oh, and free meals will help with these figures. We know a majority of teachers report their students are coming to school hungry, which makes it more difficult for them to learn.

Oh my rage.

Making SNAP a block grant is stupid.

The End.

David Rogers had an article over at Politico on the new working poor and SNAP. As Speaker John Boehner asks where are all the job, House Republicans try to kick the unemployed off food stamps if they can’t find jobs. You see Boehner and Co are looking to reimpose work requirements on millions of able-bodied adults on SNAP.  Most of these people have no earnings and without job training or workfare slots, these changes could have disastrous effects on everyone. But House GOP pretend to believe all poor people are lazy...I'm pretty sure they aren't all collectively this stupid, but rather they are callous and have no concern for the poor. You can heard libertarian and conservative asshats screaming "individualism over socialism" now.

The House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R-Ok) is resisting the move because this is going to be bad for the economy…take a minute, a Republican as a voice of reason is strange to me as well. However, the Oklahoma state Legislature has already taken steps to reinstate the work requirements. Additionally, the Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va) has raised the issue a few times with Lucas to win conservative votes for his farm bill (slated for markup May 15).

So this sounds like the GOP of yester-decade and the welfare reform debate from 1990s. Obviously, this will show what, if anything, they have learned from their losses in November. Romney’s rhetoric became pretty taboo pretty fast during the campaign with his “truly needed” language. However, some of the GOP has decided this is the way to go with their assumptions that poor people need to get back to work. This call to motivate the poor is in contrast to the promises the House GOP have made to help low-income, working class Americans hovering at the poverty line.

Way back when, the “working poor” were the Republican model for social advancement, which was helped by the economic boom in the 1990s. However, now there has been the shift from full-time laborers to part-time laborers, which means fewer hours and fewer benefits. At the same time the social safety-net costs are raising, while the GOP takes aim to cut benefits.

Rogers summarizes a bit of where these pressures are coming from, which is the Heritage Foundation, which isn’t far from my apartment, and I always consider the ramifications to sneaking in…I just want to look around, maybe take some things, pour red paint over some desks, you know the usual. Also, Wisconsin’s Secretary’s Innovation Group and Gov. Walker are putting on the pressure. The article continues to note that New York’s Mayor Bloomberg (if you were on my Valentine's list then you know my feelings on him) is in favor of work requirements for food stamps. His human resources commissioner, Robert Doar said, “The mayor is a big believer in work. We believe work is the path out of poverty.”

I don’t think they know how poverty or the economy works. Food stamps (SNAP or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) is going to be the test run for Republican’s new approach to poverty, which is kind of their old approach to poverty. In 2012, enrollment in SNAP reached 46.6 million which costs $78.4 billion. This is double the spending level in 2008 and reflects the recession and President Obama’s decision to increase benefits. A little info: SNAP is a federally funded program so everyone who meets the requirements gets it, not to be confused with a block grant like TANF, which is a set amount from the feds and states make up the rest. With TANF when the money is gone it is gone. People don't get TANF because of shortages of funds. The social safety-net in the US is really only for the most destitute. Anyone who studies it will tell you that.

Most people recognize that SNAP is a little program and has to do a lot, while critics often claim that Congress waive SNAP rules without updating them. While the program does need some reform the reformers are split on what that is. Republicans want to turn the program into a block grant, which is the worst idea every next to ending the program just look at the outcomes for TANF recipients. Republicans are also interested in reinstating the asset test, which is an outdated plan from the 1980s, which Texas rejected…Texas rejected. Yeah, good plan.

The article alleges that work reforms are an investment in people over cost saving for Washington. Rogers says:

“The numbers suggest the work reforms are more an investment in people than a big cost savings for Washington. Wisconsin is assuming a 50 percent participation rate in the training effort but at an added public cost of about $125-a month per participant. All this, when the maximum food stamp benefit for many of these individuals is about $200 a month.”

This investment in people might not be true. This is cost saving for corporations who high low-wage laborers and can pay them less than minimum wage (as long as the total benefits you collect balance to minimum wage, which includes TANF, SNAP, housing assistance, etc). That isn’t mentioned in this article. Work requirements push low-skilled people in low-skilled work for low-wages. This is how the classes continue to become stratified.

Conservatives are worried about the ABAWDs (Able-bodied Adults without Dependents) participation have increased. In 2008, 1.9 million ABAWDs were enrolled in SNAP, which was about 6.9%, but 2011 data shows 4 million (9%) of total enrollment. This isn’t a huge increase by any means especially with the slow economic recovery. At this point 43 states opted for the automatic waivers because they qualify for jobless aid. The Food and Nutrition Service told Politico that 33 states may still qualify by 2015 based on the economic forecasting, which I assume is determined by an intern with an magic 8 ball. Of course, Congress could just drop the extended benefits which would trigger state waivers.

So the Conservatives are circling and taking aim at Lucas by potentially blocking another farm bill if he doesn’t get in line. So never fear, Republicans are going to try to force through work requirements on SNAP by playing politics and bullying their own. Turning SNAP into a block grant is a horrifyingly bad idea. You can see what has happened or not happened with TANF. First, work participation rates (after being determined with an Ouija board and a prayer) are a poor metric to determine if people are leaving poverty. After welfare reform, it has been shown that more people are living in poverty and disconnected from any resources. So kicked off welfare and receiving no aid with low-wages if they have any employment. Secondly, block grants are finite resources, and they run out, which is one of the reasons cash assistance benefits haven’t gone up in most states since the 1996 reform. Finally, make no mistake this will result in people who need SNAP going without benefits. We’ll have more malnutrition in the US, in the USA, a country that consumes the most resources.