South Carolina Republican Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer is being ridiculed for a recent speech where he appears to compare poor people to stray cats and connect having “ample food supply” to increasing welfare demand.
Here is the key quote:
“My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better.”
Perhaps his grandma should have also told him not to quote her on this one.
Almost sixty percent of kids in South Carolina participate in free or reduced cost lunches. Bauer insists that those free lunches appear to be driving down test scores:
“I can show you a bar graph where free and reduced lunch has the worst test scores in the state of South Carolina,” adding, “You show me the school that has the highest free and reduced lunch, and I’ll show you the worst test scores, folks. It’s there, period.” … “You go to a school where there’s an active participation of parents, and guess what? They have the highest test scores. So what do you do? You say, ‘Look folks, if you receive goods or services from the government and you don’t attend a parent-teacher conference, bam, you lose your benefits.’”
I just hope that he does not read this blog and see the availability of haggis in a can for lunchroom cafeterias, here.
By the way, have you noticed that the number of truly moronic statements goes up dramatically with the free availability of microphones. I can show you a bar graph where politicians near free mics have the worst ideas in any state.
And the welfare system set up for the corporations that make them millions in tax returns? Are we the people, the poor people actually the one’s feeding the stray cats? I sure am not making millions off of the backs of others.
Heck I heard that Murtha was being investigated about the connection of contributions and votes. The lobbyist for one of the major contributors was his former Chief of Staff. So what about abscam. That is History compared to what was coming down and one of the reasons that he did not become speaker.
BobEsq:
thank you.
Hernandez v. Robles: The New York Case
“Chief Judge Judith Kaye, in dissent, made a strong case for heightened scrutiny, arguing that the right to marry, which is fundamental, encompasses the right to marry a person of one’s own sex, and contending that gay people – long the subject of unfair prejudice – should be deemed a “suspect class.”
And even under a lower standard of review, Judge Kaye saw no “rational basis” for the ban on same-sex marriage. She asked: How does a ban on same-sex marriage promote stability in heterosexual households? And isn’t a preference for mother/father households illegitimate under federal Supreme Court precedent? After all, the Court’s decisions in Romer v. Evans and Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down statutes disadvantaging gays under the lowest standard of review, make clear that a governmental entity may not act out of animus or moral disapproval toward a particular group – and isn’t privileging opposite-sex couples downgrading same-sex ones?
Future generations, Judge Kaye wisely cautioned, will look back on the New York Court of Appeals’ “decision as an unfortunate misstep.”
http://writ.lp.findlaw.com/grossman/20060808.html
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/ny/cases/app/86-89opn06.pdf
RIP John.
Bob Esq:
I am OK with gay marriage just so you know that I am genuine in my belief that the ruling allowing corporations to spend money on campaign adds boils down to a individual rights interpretation of this law.
Can you please send me a link to her decision, I can find articles on the case but no links to the actual decision.
John Murtha died at age 77. Complications from a gall bladder last month. In reading the article he got his seat when Saylor died in office in 1974.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/08/AR2010020802371.html
Byron: so we can limit marriage?
Yes; evidenced by differing state laws on the subject. However, if you read what Chief Judge Kaye has to say about limitations on marriage to certain groups and the problem of Equal Protection, you will see an incredible mind at work.
BobEsq:
so we can limit marriage?