Self-Deluded Hypocritical Douchebags for $100 Alex
He sure is a classic Republican:
This pits the ability of poor people to eat — not well, but sort of
enough — against the production of agricultural commodities. That would
be a difficult choice if the subsidies were going to farmers who could
be crushed by failure, but in reality most direct payments go to those
who need them least.
Among them is Congressman Stephen Fincher, Republican of Tennessee,
who justifies SNAP cuts by quoting 2 Thessalonians 3:10: “For even when
we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work
should not eat.”
Even if this quote were not taken out of context — whoever wrote 2
Thessalonians was chastising not the poor but those who’d stopped
working in anticipation of the second coming — Fincher ignores the fact
that Congress is a secular body that supposedly doesn’t base policy on
an ancient religious text that contradicts itself more often than not. Not that one needs to break a sweat countering his “argument,” but 45 percent of food stamp recipients are children, and in 2010, the U.S.D.A. reported that as many as 41 percent are working poor.
This would be just another amusing/depressing example of an elected official ignoring a huge part of his constituency (about one in seven
Americans rely on food stamps, though it’s one in five in Tennessee,
the second highest rate in the South), were not Fincher himself a
hypocrite.
For the God-fearing Fincher is one of the largest recipients of U.S.D.A. farm subsidies in Tennessee history;
he raked in $3.48 million in taxpayer cash from 1999 to 2012, $70,574
last year alone. The average SNAP recipient in Tennessee gets $132.20 in
food aid a month; Fincher received $193 a day. (You can eat pretty well
on that.) [4]
Rising Hegemon
6 comments:
41% are working poor -- which is another way of saying that the government is subsidizing unrealistically low wages. Nobody cab afford to work for minimum wage without SNAP subsidies.
By keeping people minimally fed, as a community/commonwealth, we take away power from the demagogue and the preacher. That would be why their shorts are in a knot. That and being heartless bastards.
I believe that in the olden days the Bible was used to justify the Slavery thingy too. And - eternally - the war on the lady parts. And to support the war on the summer of love and Woodstock and hippies. And.....well, everything an ignorant old bastard might want to make war on.
old testament of course. old testament god was a dick.
the bible belt need to spout more good news.
if jobs were providing LIVING WAGES or the MINIMUM WAGE WAS RAISED THEN this would be okk. but we have neither.
Your scriptures exegesis is spot on.
This congress critter deserves a horse whipping for having wandered into territory unfamililar to your typical bible thumper.
They usually feel more at home in the OT, especially among the scolding and punishments in Deuteronomy.
That's my home state. Oh, once upon a time we produced the occasional Al Gore, but lately we sure seem to be raisin' quite a passel of these moral defectives, and what's worse, insisting on allowing them out in public.
Like the man said, this guy is a perfect example of someone who's read the Bible in small enough doses to inoculate themselves to the sense of it.
the meanness of spirit shown by so many republicans and austerity nitwits is reflected in their intellect and their moral responsibility to serve... they are damn near invisible on the scales.
my guess is they figure their happy place in the clouds has enough space under the doors that they can sneak in unnoticed as the little specks of wasted humanity that they are.
Post a Comment