Biden (with the help of Covid) un-stereotyping the Welfare Queen and able bodied poor turning the safety net into a hammock

[JEDI]

Analysis: Biden just dethroned the Welfare Queen

It's one of the most toxic and enduring racist myths in American political history. But in awarding cash payments to millions of working people of color, President Biden has largely defused this line of attack.

www.cnn.com

Over 40yrs ago, then presidential hopeful Ronald Reagan described the Welfare queen as:
Black woman of indeterminate age who has 12 Social Security cards, mooches on benefits from four fake dead husbands and collects welfare payments under 80 bogus names while getting food stamps.

It spread the myth that most Black and poor people were lazy cheaters looking for a handout instead of a hand up.

Biden is trying to change that view.

Biden openly describes his upcoming American Jobs Plan, which would invest in rebuilding roads and airports, as a plan to raise the wages of home health aides and caregivers -- professions where the majority of workers are women of color.

The pandemic has offered Biden a counter to that stereotype: The Black and brown "essential workers" who risked their lives under grueling conditions during the pandemic to help others

"For instance, most of the frontline workers in all of our cities have been mostly Black and brown. They've been exposing themselves (to the virus) while delivering food and Grubhub to you while you're working at home. That's a story that has a lot of potential to change minds."

The Welfare Queen also is no longer a potent symbol because Biden has taken advantage of a shift in thinking about how to help the poor.

The sheer scale of Biden's multitrillion-dollar effort to end the pandemic and make life better for millions of struggling Americans has inspired some commentators to say that Biden has closed the door on the Reagan era.

The Welfare Queen myth was a racist fable that reinforced some of the ugliest stereotypes about Black and poor people.

Biden has done what neither Clinton nor Obama could do:
He's dethroned the Welfare Queen.


I think it's premature to say Biden has closed the door on Reagan era racism.
But with the pandemic showing the country how hard working minorities are, he has a great chance to get people in America to think differently about the poor.

And I was on the side of the safety net becoming a hammock.

I read the story last year about a city in CA giving 125 random poor people $500/month with no strings attached.
it was funded by donors so no tax payer $ was used.

even so, i thought the experiment would reinforce the stereotype.
I was wrong.
Results of the experiment:
https://www.npr.org/2021/03/04/9736...trings-attached-stipends-pays-off-study-finds

 

[Jaskalas]

Biden didn't start the stimulus payments.
And raising worker pay isn't exactly "welfare queen" stereotype.

While I appreciate the sentiment, the narrative does have some holes in it. Though we can certainly be glad Democrats are less afraid to help people today than, say, the 90s, and 00s.

 

[Jhhnn]

Biden didn't start the stimulus payments.
And raising worker pay isn't exactly "welfare queen" stereotype.

While I appreciate the sentiment, the narrative does have some holes in it. Though we can certainly be glad Democrats are less afraid to help people today than, say, the 90s, and 00s.

I'm getting a whiff of bothsiderism...

 

[soulcougher73]

I'm getting a whiff of bothsiderism...

Sometimes things are not just black and white, right and wrong, and both sides are involved to some extent. As long as the better side is willing to progress and move forward, and right potential past wrongs, then it’s all good in my book. The both sides thing is over played to try and look past, past errors that may show unfavorable upon your preferred side.

 

[GoodRevrnd]

I'm not sure I agree. Welfare queen aside, many employers are reeling from goosed up unemployment impact on labor scarcity. I'm not saying the upward wage pressure is a bad thing, but your post is about the eroding perception of the safety net as a hammock and it's plainly obvious many people have the opposite takeaway.

 

[JEDI]

I'm not sure I agree. Welfare queen aside, many employers are reeling from goosed up unemployment impact on labor scarcity. I'm not saying the upward wage pressure is a bad thing, but your post is about the eroding perception of the safety net as a hammock and it's plainly obvious many people have the opposite takeaway.

many repub states have just opted out of the $300/week fed unemployment.

lets see next month how many more people are going back to work vs the states that kept the $300/week.

 

[Jhhnn]

Sometimes things are not just black and white, right and wrong, and both sides are involved to some extent. As long as the better side is willing to progress and more forward and right potential past wrongs, then it’s all good in my book. The both sides thing is over played to try and look past, past errors that may show unfavorable upon your preferred side.

Is there some part of the GOP's implacable opposition to teh ebil big gubmint soshulism (other than for the Rich) that you don't understand? Lower taxes! Smaller Gubmint! Let the Sacred Free Market & the beneficent Job Creators provide! Behold the magic of Trickle Down!

 

[JEDI]

many employers are reeling from goosed up unemployment $'s impact on labor scarcity.
perception of the safety net as a hammock

read this today:

CNN - Breaking News, Latest News and Videos

View the latest news and breaking news today for U.S., world, weather, entertainment, politics and health at CNN.com.

lite.cnn.com

there are some people taking advantage of the extra unemployment checks but another reason is the lack of childcare.

with most schools going hybrid instead of full time students for the rest of the school year, 1 parent has to stay home some days of the week thus cant return to full time work

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

lol during a time period with some of the biggest fraud in the history of the US - of places like California and states across the nation that have reported 15-30% fraud in unemployment payments.... and tons circulating from the PPP loans as well....

Yeah sure, definitely no fraud problems happening lol.

Anyhow, similar to what was released if the minimum wage was set to $15 hour, you're about to see an epic reckoning of people getting evicted across the country. You simply can't manipulate the market to demand $15/hour for something that isn't worth $15.

 

[Amol S.]

read this today:

CNN - Breaking News, Latest News and Videos

View the latest news and breaking news today for U.S., world, weather, entertainment, politics and health at CNN.com.

lite.cnn.com

there are some people taking advantage of the extra unemployment checks but another reason is the lack of childcare.

with most schools going hybrid instead of full time students for the rest of the school year, 1 parent has to stay home some days of the week thus cant return to full time work

One of the following two things are going to happen with parents that are in those situations. Either they are going to come out and vote in large numbers for Democrat politicians, or they are going to move back to New York and California. If the latter happens and the population in those states increase, the number of seats and electoral votes in those states increase. Thus it would be a win-win for the Democrats in both situations.

 

[Jhhnn]

lol during a time period with some of the biggest fraud in the history of the US - of places like California and states across the nation that have reported 15-30% fraud in unemployment payments.... and tons circulating from the PPP loans as well....

Yeah sure, definitely no fraud problems happening lol.

Anyhow, similar to what was released if the minimum wage was set to $15 hour, you're about to see an epic reckoning of people getting evicted across the country. You simply can't manipulate the market to demand $15/hour for something that isn't worth $15.

I love the way you pull numbers out of your ass.

 

[Lanyap]

I love the way you pull numbers out of your ass.

He pulls a lot of stuff out of his ass.

 

[Lanyap]

lol during a time period with some of the biggest fraud in the history of the US - of places like California and states across the nation that have reported 15-30% fraud in unemployment payments.... and tons circulating from the PPP loans as well....

Yeah sure, definitely no fraud problems happening lol.

Anyhow, similar to what was released if the minimum wage was set to $15 hour, you're about to see an epic reckoning of people getting evicted across the country. You simply can't manipulate the market to demand $15/hour for something that isn't worth $15.

Unfortunately the trump admin did not put the proper safeguards in place to catch ppp loan fraud. More cleanup for the Biden admin.

Hundreds of PPP Loans Went to Fake Farms in Absurd Places

An online lending platform called Kabbage sent 378 pandemic loans worth $7 million to fake companies (mostly farms) with names like “Deely Nuts” and “Beefy King.”

www.propublica.org

 

[HomerJS]

lol during a time period with some of the biggest fraud in the history of the US - of places like California and states across the nation that have reported 15-30% fraud in unemployment payments.... and tons circulating from the PPP loans as well....

Yeah sure, definitely no fraud problems happening lol.

Anyhow, similar to what was released if the minimum wage was set to $15 hour, you're about to see an epic reckoning of people getting evicted across the country. You simply can't manipulate the market to demand $15/hour for something that isn't worth $15.

You are lying. You don't care about fraud. The last 4 years proves that.

 

[1prophet]

Is there some part of the GOP's implacable opposition to teh ebil big gubmint soshulism (other than for the Rich) that you don't understand? Lower taxes! Smaller Gubmint! Let the Sacred Free Market & the beneficent Job Creators provide! Behold the magic of Trickle Down!

And all that happened with corporate democrats at the congressional helm during the Reagan years, the final nail in the coffin was Bill Clinton who wanted to show how much of a liberal he wasn't by actually stopping his presidential campaign to have a black man put to death, so nobody can label him a bleeding heart like they did with Dukakis,

and that doesn't include all the lip service he paid to labor and unions while stabbing them in the back with free trade agreements he signed into law for the rich corpocrats that took over the democrat party as well as all the welfare reform he pushed through.

By 1992, Bill Clinton was insisting that Democrats "should no longer feel guilty about protecting the innocent" and indicated his support of capital punishment.[14] To make his point, he flew home to Arkansas mid-campaign to affirm that the execution would continue as scheduled.[15] Some pundits considered it a turning point in that race, hardening a soft public image.[citation needed] Others tend to cite the execution as an example of what they perceive to be Clinton's opportunism, directly influenced by the failed presidential campaign of Michael Dukakis, who was portrayed by Republicans as soft on crime.[16]

Bill Clinton's critics from the anti-capital punishment sector have seen the case of Rector as an unpleasant example of what they view as Clinton's cynical careerism. The writer Christopher Hitchens, in particular, devotes much of a chapter of his book on Clinton, No One Left to Lie To, for what he regards as the immorality of the then Democratic candidate's decision to condone, and take political advantage of, Rector's execution.[11] Hitchens argues that among other actions, Clinton was attempting to deflect attention from the ongoing Gennifer Flowers sex scandal.[11]

The democrat party today is a shell of its former self, they depend more on being the lesser of two evils than actually bettering the country. Relying on dumpster fires to deflect your own corruption and ineptness works well until that dumpster fire is gone, just look at what happened to Cuomo after Trump was gone.

 

[hal2kilo]

And all that happened with corporate democrats at the congressional helm during the Reagan years, the final nail in the coffin was Bill Clinton who wanted to show how much of a liberal he wasn't by actually stopping his presidential campaign to have a black man put to death, so nobody can label him a bleeding heart like they did with Dukakis,

and that doesn't include all the lip service he paid to labor and unions while stabbing them in the back with free trade agreements he signed into law for the rich corpocrats that took over the democrat party as well as all the welfare reform he pushed through.



The democrat party today is a shell of its former self, they depend more on being the lesser of two evils than actually bettering the country. Relying on dumpster fires to deflect your own corruption and ineptness works well until that dumpster fire is gone, just look at what happened to Cuomo after Trump was gone.

Never change.

 

[ivwshane]

Never change.

If you understood what he was saying then kudos to you.