Savings for whom?

Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reports on the effect of work requirements on those who need food assistance.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has had a work requirement since 1996. The law says an able-bodied person must work or be in job training at least 20 hours a week. States have waived those restrictions for communities in economic distress.

The nasty guy administration says, in McCarter’s words, “force lazy good-for-nothings who could work but refuse to get jobs.” The GOP in West Virginia reinstated the restriction for nine poor counties and we can see the results. Forcing the poor into jobs is *not* what happened.

The change in policy did nothing to create jobs. Because of the poverty jobs don’t come to these areas. The poor residents can’t get to jobs outside these areas. Yeah, they’re able-bodied, but they can’t get to jobs 40 miles away. Employment growth in these counties slowed while it doubled elsewhere in West Virginia.

The result: People rely on charity or go hungry. Huntington City Mission went from serving 8,700 meals a month to 12,300.

GOP delegate Tom Fast says he wants to apply the restrictions to the whole state because the change has created a “significant savings.” Savings for whom? Certainly not the charities. Or the poor.



Lots of news in the last few days that the federal deficit for 2019 was $1.02 trillion dollars. Hunter of Daily Kos says that means the big 2017 tax law didn’t bring in close to the amount of money the GOP said it would – and that’s not an accident. Also no accident is that many news outlets reporting the story are not calling on the GOP to fix it.

Hunter says about this trillion dollar deficit:

It will be met, when Republicans next lose the presidency, with Republican demands that something is done about this outrage that somehow happened under Republican watch, according to the Republican plan, as a result of Republican legislation forced through via reconciliation measures so that Republicans could best steamroll over the other party. Conservatives will then demand we spend less on fixing the roads, and less on feeding the poor, and that Social Security is either gutted or at the very least given to Wall Street as seed money for whatever new gambling effort the markets will next invent.

And then they will propose another corporate tax cut. And again, the Paul Ryans of the party will lie, outright, to claim that the next one will fix all this up for sure.

Laura Clawson of Daily Kos reports on a new study that says money can buy happiness. Clawson summarized:

90% of people earning more than $500,000 a year say they are “completely” or “very” satisfied with their lives. By contrast, just 44% of people earning less than $35,000 a year are completely or very satisfied.

The rich …

don’t worry about paying medical bills or going hungry. They know that even if their kids screw up every which way, they’re more likely to go to college and get good jobs than poor kids who do everything right.

Lower-income people in the United States are deprived of a basic sense of hope that they and their loved ones can get ahead. High-income people have every reason to believe the world will be a kind place.

Commenters roundly criticized the study. They say the study grouped income of $35K – $99K. Which doesn’t make sense. $35K is close to the poverty line. $99K isn’t.

Doctor Grumpus adds:

This new study found nothing new: Poverty sucks, and being in a state of happiness in poverty is very difficult. Once one is out of poverty, the likelihood for happiness increases, but after that, more money doesn’t increase the likelihood for happiness. There is nothing in the presentation of this research that suggests otherwise. (Notice that the report just presents the extremes, and not the trajectory of the change...I am confident in saying that, based on the totality of the research, the relationship between happiness and income is not linear).

Emily Alford at Jezebel wrote that some teenage boys really like the nasty guy.

So with all the performative masculinity bullshit they’re wading through, it’s not exactly a shocker that boys have fallen for one of the worst performances of masculinity of all time—that of charlatan-in-chief Donald Trump.

Some boys are using the nasty guy as an example of how to bully the girls. One boy put it this way:

Just historically, when you think Republican, you think males, and when you think liberals, you think more female.

Hmm. I wonder why… It certainly can’t be because the GOP has, for at least the last decade, been modeling the worst of white male supremacy, which chases everyone else out of the party.